Fiona Harvey looks at hype and reality around e-government after a
London conference is cancelled
Have governments any hope of ever "getting" the Internet? That
was the question posed by the cancellation last month of the World
Internet Forum, a conference planned for London that would have
discussed how governments can use the Internet to cut costs and
improve their services to their citizens.
The conference had to be cancelled at the last minute because of
the lack of interest from governments. The organisers had been
expecting 200 delegates, mostly government officials from around
the world, to show up, paying about £1,200 each for a ticket, and
in the event managed to sign up only about half that figure. They
blamed apathy on the part of governments for the cancellation, and
promised that the conference would be rescheduled at a later date
if possible.
Derek Wyatt, Labour MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey, is the man
who came up with the idea for the World Internet Forum, which he
envisaged as an alternative to the World Economic Forum held
annually in Davos, Switzerland. "The World Economic Forum is a rich
man's club. What you need is a more democratic forum, open to all,
where representatives from different countries can get together to
talk about how best to use the Internet to improve their
efficiency," he explained.
At the Forum, delegates would have discussed Internet projects
already completed or under way in different countries, and would
have developed some "best practice" models for e-government
projects.
Developing countries would also have benefited from the
experience gained by more developed countries in architecting their
e-government projects, according to the organisers.
While he had nothing to do with the organisation of the
conference - which was handled by the World Internet Forum's chief
executive Robert Blaney - Wyatt was scathing about governments'
response to the Internet.
He believes governments need to define for themselves a concept
of "government.com", which would describe how governments could use
the Internet across their activities to generate better
communications between government departments and better
services.
He pointed to the recent protests against the World Trade
Organisation and the fuel protests in the UK as examples of how
movements have "got" the Internet, and said governments needed to
take a leaf out of their opponents' books.
Wyatt will be lecturing on "government.com" in Bilbao, Spain,
later this year.
If governments are apathetic about the net, nothing could be
further from the scene in the business world. While dotcom stocks
may have taken a battering in the last few months, the enthusiastic
take-up of the Internet by companies eager to find new customers
and markets, or reaching a global audience, or cutting their costs
using business-to-business online exchanges has continued
unabated.
German media giant, Bertelsmann, for instance, did a deal with
Napster, the Internet music renegade, to start distributing its
music on the Web. A recent survey from the World Information
Technology and Services Alliance found that worldwide spending on
IT, which totalled $2.1 trillion in 1999, would rise by 50% by
2004.
Derek Brown, technology analyst at stockbrokers Robertson
Stephens saidthat governments had not taken up the Internet in the
way that industry had, and could learn from business examples.
"There is enormous pent-up demand in governments for data
management,"he said, giving the example of the NHS, in which he
said huge cost savings could be made if everyday functions and
procedures were automated, in the way that they are in large
companies.
According to his estimates, paper transactions in the NHS could
cost as much as $10 (£7) a time, while if they were automated, the
cost would be more like 50 cents.
"In the public sector in the 1980s and 1990s we saw the private
finance initiative and waves of IT outsourcing generate huge cost
savings," he noted. Another wave of Internet projects could do the
same, he said.
When governments did finally start to use the Internet in the
same way as industry, they would be eagerly welcomed by software
vendors, who saw a vast untapped market for their wares in the
public sector, Brown said.
The UK Government, meanwhile, believes it has "got" the
Internet. A spokes-man pointed to the promise by the prime
minister, Tony Blair, that all government services would be capable
of being delivered electronically by 2005. "We are still on track
to deliver on that promise,"he said.
Fiona Harvey is former editor of business technology bible PC
Week and business monthly Internet World. She now writes for the
Financial Times