INTERNET - Blairy vision

The government has been making the right noises about the Net, but it is all talk and no action when it comes to using the service itself.

No one could accuse Tony Blair's government of ignoring theet, but it is all talk and no action when it comes to using the service itself. internet.

Not only was the Charismatic One interviewed live (well, almost) on the Net in April, but in the same month the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) published the policy document Our Information Age. This promised to harness the potential of IT to transform education, widen access to new technologies, promote competition and competitiveness, foster high-quality new services and even modernise government.

It had all the right buzz-phrases: coherent strategy, partnerships, world leader, crucial factor in our competitiveness - and highlighted several initiatives already under-way (even if some of them were started by the Tories). But many politicians and observers remain unconvinced.

'The government needs to pay more attention to electronic commerce,' says shadow trade and industry minister Cheryl Gillan. 'Without a coherent policy and a minister to consider the whole (internet) picture, we can look forward only to chaos and mayhem.'

'The government is scratching the surface rather than coming up with a coherent policy,' says Lib-Dem science and technology spokesman Nigel Jones. 'It makes all the right noises about giving children Net access and so on. But the government has a problem in that it's not spending any new money in its first two years.'

Even from within its own ranks, Labour has been castigated for its approach to the Net. Derek Wyatt was a BSkyB executive until he was elected as Labour member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey last year. 'The whole thing is a fiasco,' he complains. 'Nobody in government or the DTI fully understands the internet and, unfortunately, it's least understood in the Number 10 policy unit.'

In terms of legislation and policy, government action on the Net (or the lack of it) falls into four main areas: regulation, electronic commerce, education and infrastructure.

On regulation, the present government's main contribution has been to follow the US lead and declare that, as far as possible, existing law should apply online just as it does offline. This includes laws on contracts, libel, advertising standards, copyright, data protection and a host of others.

Illegal activities emanating from abroad may be almost impossible to control. But most internet traffic is national rather than international, so in most cases existing law should be sufficient to protect the citizens of HMG (Her Majesty's Government) online as well as off.

The remaining strands of the government's regulatory policy, as set out by science, energy and industry minister John Battle in a speech in March, are to work for international co-operation, particularly to control obscenity and promote free trade; to ensure users have access to security products; and to put the onus on ISPs to uphold the law online.

It is difficult to see what more a national government could do, particularly in a business and political climate where the onus is on laissez-faire.

The Alliance for Electronic Business - a lobbying group recently set up by the CBI, the CSSA, the Federation of the Electronics Industry (FEI), the Direct Marketing Association and the Electronic Commerce Association - agrees.

'The concept of the UK government trying to "regulate the internet" is a bit absurd,' says Tom Wills-Sandford, the FEI's director of information and communications technology. 'We would like the government to lead the way by becoming a leading user and promoter of the Net, but we're not looking for a lot of heavy regulation. We want it to be market driven.'

The wheels grind slowly, but they are moving in the right direction.

The Internet Watch Foundation, co-sponsored by the DTI, has the makings of an independent regulator of content, though commentators say it needs more teeth.

And HMG is working through the EU to gain control of domain names from private firms in California and establish an international body.

Electronic commerce also requires some regulation. It must ensure that laws on contracts and consumer protection can be relied on, and that transactions will be secure, in order to bolster consumer confidence, without which Netborne e-commerce will never take off.

HMG is doing its bit, with ministers and delegations hurtling around the world, signing declarations, statements, frameworks and charters with the US, the EU and others, and putting e-commerce on the agendas of international trade and finance bodies such as Gatt and the OECD.

E-commerce is writ large in government rhetoric regarding the Net and the message seems to have got through to the politicians.

'The government has a very clear understanding that e-commerce is essential for a thriving UK economy,' says Chris Godwin, issues manager for corporate affairs at IBM.

One of the government's few concrete acts has been the policy on security and encryption, revealed in April. This has come in for some stick from lobbyists and financial institutions for insisting that encryption keys should be made available to the authorities on demand, rather than giving them the power to request unencrypted original documents. But the devil will be in the detail, which is still unclear.

The real opportunities in e-commerce, some commentators argue, are in making the UK a hub of world electronic trade. If the UK misses the boat, it could find itself trailing in the wake of others.

'We have the opportunity to build on the fact that London has been a centre of international law and trading for longer than anywhere else, and to ensure that UK law becomes the law of international e-commerce,' says Philip Virgo, strategic advisor to the Institute for the Management of Information Systems. 'The government needs to think about the laws of international trading as they have been adjudicated in the Admiralty courts for hundreds of years, and apply them to electronic media.'

If e-commerce is nominally based in the UK, we shall be able to tax it, which promises to be a major fillip to the UK economy - just as the 'invisible earnings' of the City have propped up our balance of payments for decades.

There will also be economic benefits from the number of jobs created here.

The Treasury is said to be well aware of the opportunities.

On more general internet taxation, the main fear is that it will act as a brake on the growth of electronic trade. 'Our position is that the Net should be taxation-neutral. There should certainly be no disincentive to doing business online,' says Wills-Sandford.

So HMG's softly-softly approach on taxing the Net - whether deliberate or the result of a policy vacuum - has largely met with approval. Labour has also closed the loophole which allowed ISPs to move their operations offshore to avoid VAT.

On the remaining issues of education and infrastructure, the government's policies - or lack of them - have encountered more criticism. It plans to double the number of locations where the public can get a taste of the Net from 2,000 to 4,000, under the DTI's IT For All programme - but this was originally started by the Tories under science and technology minister Ian Taylor.

Labour launched its National Grid for Learning initiative - to connect schools, libraries, museums and art galleries into a single network - shortly after taking office, though the idea has also been claimed by the Tories. But only about 6,000 of 32,000 state schools have internet connections.

The government aims to increase this to 16,000 by the end of next year, but this will require more than the #100 million of public money already promised - not to mention a mammoth teacher-training drive. No wonder community involvement and business sponsorship figure strongly on the Education Department's wish-list.

And there is a further problem with this, according to Wyatt, who argues: 'You can't have a National Grid for Learning without a national grid.'

This means a high-bandwidth medium such as cable. To encourage the development of broadband services, the government is lifting the ban on BT and other telcos providing broadcast entertainment, with effect from 2001 - earlier than planned by the Tories.

But even Labour's supporters believe it should be doing more, especially in rural areas where cable is not commercially viable.

Andrew Miller, president of Computing for Labour and vice chairman of the parliamentary IT Committee, says there are pilot schemes, such as Norweb's in Manchester and BT's on the Isle of Bute, and the government is setting policy goals to ensure rural areas are not left out.

'But there isn't a single approach,' says Miller. 'My criticism is that we could easily end up in a situation where some people in rural areas cannot access systems. The government has a function to drive policy and ensure there isn't a rural/urban divide.'

The Lib-Dems' Nigel Jones agrees. 'There's a danger of creating a group of information have-nots, especially in rural areas,' he warns.

The other issue is how well the government itself uses the internet and related technologies. It should be positioning itself at the forefront of the digital revolution to lead by example.

There has been progress. Hansard, the verbatim record of debates in Parliament, has been on the Web since October 1996, and most departments have Web sites, including Number 10. The DTI offers advice to small businesses over the Web and new businesses can register from a single online form with all the agencies they must deal with, such as the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise.

But compared with Canada, where tax returns can be filed online and email is the preferred method of communication between government and citizens, or Australia, where job centres are linked via touch-screens and video-conferencing, the UK remains backward.

'The existing scenario in Whitehall is farcical,' said Wyatt in an adjournment debate in the House on 18 March. 'Because no single department is in charge of the internet, it falls into the black hole of cyberspace. Few cabinet ministers understand it. Many still have no email address, and they clearly do not look at their own departmental Web sites, which are woefully inadequate and make us look like bumbling amateurs.'

Other commentators agree there is not enough co-ordination of departmental Web sites or communication between departments, largely because of management failings and empire-building by ministers and civil servants.

Whitehall has an intranet, but this has yet to be updated to a full browser interface. Ministers can use a secure network to access documents, instead of carrying them in the traditional red boxes, but Gillan suspects this is little used.

Backbenchers and opposition parties fare even worse. 'We should be able to table questions electronically or send letters to any department and get an answer the same day, but there's none of that,' says Jones. 'Seventy per cent of the work of an MP is to do with constituents. I think it should be a requirement for MPs to be accessible by whatever means available - email, fax, phone or post.'

Wyatt argues for a Ministry of Communications to co-ordinate internet policy, but others are not so sure, particularly since extending the reach of current laws to the Net necessarily brings it into the jurisdiction of a number of ministries.

'I'd be concerned if the Net became the responsibility of a particular department,' says David Harrington, director general of the Telecoms Managers Association.

'I think that might act as a drag on its development.'

But the government has its supporters. While the DTI is criticised by some, others have high regard for it and believe other departments could learn from its example. 'DTI ministers and officials are very well briefed and very open to comment. They have very definite views,' says Godwin.

'There's a very good relationship between the DTI and the IT industry, which is giving Britain a definite lead in this area.'

Even rank-and-file MPs are becoming more IT-literate. 'With such a large turnover of MPs at the last election, a significant number of people have come in from a background where IT was the norm, not the exception,' says Miller.

He disputes Wyatt's claim that the prime minister and his officials do not understand the Net: 'I've had lengthy discussions with Barbara Roche (DTI minister), David Clark (the Cabinet minister responsible for Whitehall IT systems), the Department of Health and the Home Office, and the level of understanding was a breath of fresh air compared with the previous administration, with the exception of Ian Taylor. And I've been encouraged by the depth of thinking that comes from the Number 10 policy unit,' says Miller.

Labour's first year at the helm of UK plc's internet venture has been somewhat conservative. The government seems to have the right framework and some of the right ideas. Now it must find the money, time and political will to put them into practice - and soon.

THE MINISTRY OF THE FUTURE

One of the more outspoken critics of government internet policy is Derek Wyatt, Labour MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey. His suggestions, mostly laid out in an adjournment debate on 18 March, include:

- a new Ministry of Communications - with responsibility for the internet, telecoms, broadcasting, software, encryption, the millennium bug, libraries and the Post Office - run by a committee of 24 MPs and 24 software experts on loan from industry. It would also promote teleworking and advise NHS trusts and education authorities

- education of all government departments and MPs by the new ministry

- making all departments and agencies internet-led

- giving every home a computer by 2002, paid for from National Lottery funds

- 10 hours' free internet access per week for all homes

- establishing a national broadband cable network administered like the ITV network, with a series of regional franchises.