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PRIME MINISTER Report from the e-Minister and e-Envoy - April 2003 In your keynote address at the e-Summit in November 2002 you announced the launch of the 'Online Nation' campaign this spring. The purpose of the campaign is to raise awareness of the benefits of the internet among people who are not already online and to break down the barriers that people still face when getting online for the first time. 'Online Nation' will build on the success of the first UK online campaign in November 2001. Internet access in the UK continues to grow and we can be proud of all we have achieved so far. 62% of adults in the UK have accessed the internet at some time and 52% are regular users. 46% of households are now online compared to 39% one year ago and 9% in 1998, and 99% of all schools now have access to the internet compared to only 28% in 1998. However, there are currently around 17 million people in the UK who have never used the internet. Motivation - understanding how the internet could be personally relevant - remains a major barrier to getting online, cited by 49% of the offline population. The 'Online Nation' campaign will seek to address this issue by demonstrating how the internet can enhance people's daily lives. We are especially keen to encourage elderly people, those in low income households, disabled people and the long-term unemployed to get online as it is these people who are least likely to be aware of what the internet can do for them. To help get our message across we are working with a number of companies and voluntary organisations to deliver the campaign. These include the BBC, Arriva Group, BT plc, Dixons Stores, the Prince's Trust, the National Library for the Blind, and Citizens Advice. We hope that working with these partners will enable even more people to understand the benefits that the internet can bring. 'Online Nation' will be launched on 12 May and run until 7 June. Around 6,000 UK online centres - based in libraries, community centres and a range of convenient locations - will offer a free introductory session to the internet to anyone who wants it. The Office of the e-Envoy is working together with Resource, University for Industry and the Department for Education and Skills to ensure the engagement of as many UK online centres as possible and to encourage centres to supplement national and regional initiatives with their own local activity. In addition, we will commission regional TV programmes and community service announcements to demonstrate how people have benefited from using the internet. During March we ran a pilot campaign in Newcastle to test the effectiveness of our strategy, helped by local football hero Peter Beardsley who was present at the launch. We are currently reviewing the results to inform the national campaign in May. The second focus for this report is on broadband. On 20 March we published the Response to the Broadband Stakeholder Group Second Annual Report and Strategic Recommendations. The £30 million Broadband Fund and other projects are doing valuable work stimulating the roll-out and take-up of broadband in semi-urban and rural areas, and the UK Broadband Taskforce is pressing ahead in its role to ensure that the £1 billion that you announced would be spent on broadband connections for the public sector will widen availability of broadband still further. Meanwhile, broadband connections are reaching record levels. By the end of February 2003 the UK had over 1.6 million high-speed broadband users. The best news of all is that this figure is increasing by some 35,000 per week. UK prices are cheaper than those of many of our European neighbours and the UK market is more competitive both in terms of infrastructure and service provider competition. Thirdly, two Home Office consultations launched last month address another vital question for the e-economy: that of how to strike the right balance between respect for individual privacy and protecting the public from crime and terrorism in the Information Age. On 18 June 2002, following widespread public concern, David Blunkett withdrew a draft Order laid before Parliament to add public authorities to the access to communications data provisions of Chapter II of Part I of Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The Home Secretary announced that public discussion would take place before new proposals would be brought before Parliament. The consultation process should help to clarify the sensitivities around individual data security and collective protection against crime. Both consultation papers can be accessed online on the Home Office's website. "Access to communications data - respecting privacy and protecting the public from crime" seeks views on revised proposals for regulating a range of public authorities' access to communications data. The second paper is the "Consultation on a Code of Practice for voluntary retention of communications data". This meets the statutory requirement in Part 11 of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 to seek views on a draft Code of Practice for the voluntary retention of communication data by communications service providers. The consultation period for both documents extends until 3 June. The generally positive reception to them by the media was in marked contrast with the angry reaction to the original proposals for access to communications data published last summer. Finally, we would like to highlight
one way in which our work is relevant to the present military action
in Iraq. At the request of Government Information and Communication
Service, the Office of the e-Envoy/ the Central Sponsor for Information
Assurance has designed and built a mobile Communications and Information
Centre (CIC) system to support crisis events throughout the world.
The first operational deployment of the mobile CIC system has been
made in support of Iraq operations.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs/consult.pdf
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