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Subject: E-Government Bulletin - March 2001
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[Issue starts]
E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
The Email Newsletter On Electronic Government,
UK And Worldwide.
ISSUE 97, MARCH 2001
IN THIS ISSUE:
Section One: News
- Squatters move into council.co.uk property; Cracks appear in UK
Online;
MPs object to web-fax service; Better connected? a little; Debate the
future of
e-government; Conference diary; Libraries lead surge for computer
driving
licences; News in brief: HERO unmasked; Government guidelines; Digital
governance.
Section Two: Analysis
- Private Finance Initiative
Section Three: Teledemocracy
- Net Campaigning
Section Four: Opinion
- Copyright Policy.
[End of contents]
SECTION ONE: NEWS
SQUATTERS MOVE INTO COUNCIL.CO.UK PROPERTY
Local authorities in the UK are at serious risk of having their web site
traffic
misdirected or lost, or even of being blackmailed by 'cybersquatters',
according to new research by E-Government Bulletin.
The problem stems from the fact that, while Internet domains with the
suffix
'.gov.uk' such as 'camden.gov.uk' are protected from registration by
anyone
other than the relevant council, other generalised domains such as
'.com',
'.net' and '.co.uk' can be registered by anyone.
Once a domain of the type 'name-council.co.uk' falls into private hands,
it
could potentially be used to mislead people into thinking it was an
official
site, to publish material of a damaging nature or to try to sell the
domain back
to the council. The only safeguard for councils is to register their own
domain
variants themselves, a low-cost exercise but one which very few appear
to
have considered.
A systematic test of all 'name-council.co.uk' domains by E-Government
Bulletin to see which had been registered found that Wellingborough is
the
only UK council to own these variants: 'www.wellingboroughcouncil.co.uk'
and 'www.wellingborough-council.co.uk' both route to the official site
at
'www.wellingborough.gov.uk'.
Of the others checked, some 38 have been registered by organisations
other
than the councils named and more than 1,000 remain unclaimed.
In at least one case a 'cybersquatter' is known to have used a domain of
this
kind to publish material attacking the council concerned, namely a rant
against
a failed benefits claim. This site has now been taken down.
For the most part, owners register these domains either with a view to
selling
them or to draw traffic away from council sites to their own commercial
information services, and perhaps also to imply a fictitious endorsement
by
the council. The Barnet-, Haringey- and Islington-council.co.uk sites
all route
users to a site providing information on Muswell Hill. Similarly,
Isleofwightcouncil.co.uk feeds into a commercial directory service.
Meanwhile the owners of 'harrowcouncil.co.uk', who have given the
address
a list price of US dollars 50,000 on the online domain auction site
GreatDomains.com. Domains registered by private individuals include
torbaycouncil.co.uk, whose inhabitant kindly informs users she is not
the
council, and moraycouncil.co.uk, used as a home page for one Dennis
Scott.
CRACKS APPEAR IN UKONLINE
The Northern Ireland Assembly plans to establish a separate web address
to
provide a customised entry point to the government's citizen web portal
'UK
online'. The web address, 'http://www.onlineNI.gov.uk', will be
operational
in a few weeks, according to a BBC Online report.
The Scottish Executive is also considering a similar move, E-Government
Bulletin has learned, although the Welsh Assembly says it has no plans
to
introduce its own domain.
The Cabinet Office denies these moves undermine the unity of the UK
online
portal project despite a theoretical risk that, as sole owner of the new
domain,
the Northern Ireland Executive could potentially start redirecting
traffic
through their own sites.
UK online, which officially launched on 20 February, caters for the
different
needs of the UK's four nations with four customised subsections - UK
online
(England), 'UK Ar-lein/Online' (Wales), 'eScotland' and 'online NI'.
All the sub-sections can be viewed in English or Welsh and Cliff Sutton,
director of the UK online development programme at the site's contractor
BT,
said new language facilities may be added to serve other major
non-English
speaking communities in the UK.
Such developments are expensive, but the Cabinet Office appears to have
ample funding, having spent only 4 million UK pounds of the 10 million
pounds set aside to fund the site between June 2000 and July 2001.
The Cabinet Office said the Office of Government Commerce had not
started
a formal procurement process for the ongoing development of UK online
and
that a public private partnership arrangement had not been ruled out.
MPs OBJECT TO WEB-FAX SERVICE
A growing number of MPs are objecting to 'FaxYourMP.com', a free,
independent service that allows constituents to send fax messages to
their MPs
using a simple web interface (see E-Government Bulletin, January 2001).
Richard Page, Conservative MP for Hertfordshire South West, has refused
to
reply to faxes sent through the service because they do not carry the
image of
a physical signature. The MP has asked people to send messages using
traditional means to his constituency office.
"I have no objection to receiving faxes from any organisation you care
to
shake a stick at provided they are signed," Page said. He dismissed
FaxYourMP's digital signatures as "rather pointless".
FaxYourMP founder Tom Loosemore said such objections were spurious
since people sending faxes through FaxYourMP needed to give a valid
postcode and email address, which together give "way more authentication
than a scribbled signature on the end of a typed snail mail letter".
Page is not the first to object to FaxYourMP.com. In January Colin
Burgon,
Labour member for Elmet made a request not to receive any more
unsolicited
faxes. Soon after the Ealing and Southall Labour MP Piara Khabra made a
similar appeal, as has the social security minister Jeff Rooker.
BETTER CONNECTED? A LITTLE
The number of local authorities on the web continues to grow, but only
one
offers transactional facilities online and response to email remains
unsatisfactory, according to the latest annual snapshot of all council
web sites
by the Society of Information Technology Management
(http://www.socitm.gov.uk/).
'Better Connected 2001' reveals the number of local authorities with web
sites
has increased by 10% since last year to 442, representing some 95% of
the
467 UK councils. The percentage of sites providing detailed content on
services, as opposed to more basic promotional material increased from
53%
to 59%.
Despite such improvements, the report finds: "In general, council
websites are
not yet properly exploiting opportunities to deliver community
leadership and
joined-up government."
There was also disappointing growth in the number of 'transactional'
sites -
although 10 local authorities allowed residents to pay Council Tax
online and
26 enabled them to renew library books, only one site, run by Tameside
Metropolitan Borough Council (http://www.tameside.gov.uk/), was said to
provide extensive transactional facilities.
In a 'mystery emailer' exercise, councils were all sent a test email
asking for
information around 40% of councils never sent a response of any kind and
a
further 15% had no general email address to contact. On the other hand
nearly
half of councils managed to send a response within three days, double
the
number managing this in the last survey.
* The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR)
has
invited councils to register an interest in becoming 'pathfinder'
authorities.
Successful applicants will receive a share of 25 million UK pounds to
help
them hit Local Government Online targets. The department is also
requesting
proposals on how another 325 million pounds earmarked to help local
authorities go online should be allocated to 2004. The contact email is:
[log in to unmask]
DEBATE THE FUTURE OF E-GOVERNMENT
The publishers of E-Government Bulletin, Headstar, and its sister
company
Enterprise Events are hosting two major e-government policy events in
the
next few months - one online and one offline.
The online debate, 'Future Government Forum', will take place between 27
March and 29 March 2001 with sponsorship from BT. A core 'virtual think-
tank' of debaters including the e-Government Minister Ian McCartney has
already been assembled but to register your interest in the public
participation
area please send your contact details - name, title, company and email
address
to [log in to unmask] with the subject header 'fgf request'.
On 21 June 2001 comes the Electronic Government Forum, which this year
will be held in London. The conference will address issues raised in the
'Future Government Forum' online debate. Also on the agenda are: skills
shortages, capital expenditure and other barriers to e-Government; and
an
evaluation of web-enabled outsourcing and service management models.
Full details and online registration facilities are available at:
http://www.electronic-government.com
CONFERENCE DIARY
Governing in the 21st century: 28-30 March, Ottowa, Canada.
Hosted by Canada's Crossing Boundaries project on e-government. See:
http://www.crossingboundaries.ca/
e-Government in Europe: 30-31 May, Brussels, Belgium.
Event featuring case studies from Estonia, Austria, Finland and a vision
of the
future of e-government at a pan-European level. See:
http://www.access-conf.com/
European Conference on E-Government: 27-28 September, Dublin, Ireland.
Hosted by Trinity College, Dublin. Topics to include e-government portal
and
transaction sites, security issues, and web-enabled knowledge
management.
See:
http://www.tcd.ie/statistics/eceg2001.html
4-5 October, Zurich, Switzerland: e-Commerce, e-Business, e-Government
Hosted by Zurich University's Computer Science department. See:
http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/events/
LIBRARIES LEAD SURGE FOR COMPUTER DRIVING LICENCES
Following an item in our last issue on a Society of Information
Technology
Management report which found that around a third of local authorities
are set
to use the European Computer Driving Licence scheme to train employees
in
computer literacy, a reader writes in to expand the story.
Alan Boughey, Acting Assistant Principal Librarian, Bury Metro Libraries
says: "The figure will be much, much higher as almost all public library
services are training their front line staff to this level under a New
Opportunities Fund scheme based on the driving licence."
Under the scheme, all Bury librarians dealing directly with the public
will
receive training in showing library users how to get the most out of
online
resources.
NEWS IN BRIEF:
HERO UNMASKED: hero.ac.uk, a portal containing links to over 130 higher
education bodies, was formally launched on 6 March having quietly gone
live
a month ago. Executive director Christopher Harris said the site's
promotion
will be heavily reliant on word of mouth. See http://www.hero.ac.uk
GOVERNMENT GUIDELINES: A draft of 'version 2.0' of the guidelines for
UK government web sites is due to be launched in the first half of March
2001. They are currently nearing the end of a consultation period, in
which
government webmasters have added their input. The update will be posted
on
the e-Envoy's site where 'version 1.0' can already be found.
See http://www.e-
envoy.gov.uk/egovernment/iagc/guidelines/websites/websites.htm
DIGITAL GOVERNANCE: A web portal for information on e-government
and e-democracy in the developing world has been set up by Vikas Nath,
founder of KnowNet (http://www.knownet.org), an initiative encouraging
the
adoption of new technologies by developing countries. Digital Governance
is
at:
http://www.digitalgovernance.org/
[Section One ends]
SECTION TWO: ANALYSIS
- PRIVATE FINANCE INITIATIVE
PFI: BONANZA OR BUREAUCRATIC BURDEN?
The government has streamlined the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to
bring
more money into the public sector than ever before, but problems with
PFI
deals involving technology or 'e-government' have rumbled on.
Overrunning
costs, elastic deadlines and systems that do not adequately support the
public
sector client organisation's business operations are still all too
common.
PFI was originally introduced under the Conservatives in 1992 to allow
private firms or consortia to design, build and sometimes operate
capital assets
to provide public services. It was devised to circumvent limited public
budgets
and share some of the risks inherent in large capital projects such as
failure to
deliver on time. In exchange, the public sector agrees to lease back the
assets
and/or services at fixed rates for a set number of years.
The present government has certainly improved PFI by prioritising
projects
better, standardising contracts and offering staff from the public
sector better
deals. But some have claimed from the outset that the hidden future
costs of
PFI for the public sector will end up being too high: one never gets
something
for nothing, the argument goes. The public sector union Unison has its
own
take on the acronym, 'Pay For it Indefinitely', and another local
government
expert has joked the initiative amounts to little more than 'dodgy HP'.
Its defenders point to the fact that it is still a relatively untried,
and that if used
properly it offers a way to protects public bodies from unnecessary
risk,
ultimately reducing the taxpayer's exposure to spiralling costs.
However,
quantifying and valuing risk is an undeniably complex process and the
biggest
bugbear for PFI.
As Gershon Cohen, Deputy Director of Project Finance at the Halifax
Group
plc says: "the downside of PFI is that with contracts involving bespoke
or
complex IT solutions, and those integrating new systems into existing
ones,
we would look for additional protection against risk as they are more
likely to
go belly up.
"There have been some major disasters with government contracts - the
National Insurance computer system given to Andersen Consulting is an
example. I think it depends on the level of technology. With basic
hardware
provision you're at the lower end of the risk spectrum, but banks are
not keen
to fund things they don't understand."
For the public sector, no level of payment can compensate the failure of
project delivery to other government bodies or the general public. The
contractor may manage the technical risks well but the core business and
political risks cannot be transferred. Any contingency plans for
offsetting
these risks will also be reflected in the cost.
Although the Treasury states that the principle governing risk transfer
is that
the risk should be allocated to whichever public or private sector
organisation
is able to manage it at least cost. Cohen's view differs: "I often
wonder
whether too much risk has been placed on the private sector. The
government
have a 'get rid of everything' approach, but they need to evaluate risk
transfer
properly. They never compare and contrast the value of actually keeping
the
risk - it's not always best value to outsource it."
Mike Pritchard, head of partnerships at BT's Finance group, agrees that
PFI is
not currently working well for technology contracts.
"Clients don't tend to understand the commercial aspect; they tend to
focus on
the technical design of a project and not enough about the actual output
it will
provide; [the technical people] tend to be hobbyists with fanciful ideas
that
commercially you can't implement - they want a million pound solution
tomorrow. True partnerships need to be based on trust without too much
interference from techie people and dabblers worrying too much about
technical requirements over the costs to the people."
Pritchard says this as an area the public sector needs to understand
better,
"The general belief is that value for money is premised on price - the
highest
majority go for the cheapest solution. The public sector must get
smarter in its
understanding of value."
One major e-government PFI scheme currently in the throes of negotiation
is
'Norwich Connect'. The initiative, led by Norwich City Council, aims to
deliver 'joined-up government' to its citizens, overhaul the council's
internal
and external paper-based communications systems and outsource the
council's
entire IT function in the process. The contract will have an approximate
value
of 100 million Euro (67 million UK pounds) over 15 years.
Rees Griffiths, Director of the consultancy International Capital
Partnerships
which is advising Norwich City Council on Norwich Connect, says: "It's
too
early to tell whether PFI is an effective method of procurement for this
IT
project - the jury is out. The contract is unlikely to be signed before
summer
for what will be a two to three year implementation plan. The problems
stem
from both parties needing but failing to focus on outputs and results,
not on
technical inputs."
Griffiths believes this will improve as more projects are undertaken,
saying:
"You get better with practice." He also believes improvements will come
when more experience and knowledge is shared.
* PFI will be one of the topics of debate in an online discussion hosted
by E-
Government Bulletin's publisher Headstar and BT to be held on 27-29
March,
'Future Government Forum'. For further details see News, this issue.
[Section Two ends]
SECTION THREE: TELEDEMOCRACY
- NET CAMPAIGNING
FOLLOWING THE US PRECEDENT
Parliamentary candidates and their supporters are looking to the recent
US
Presidential campaign for an indication of how the Internet will be used
in the
upcoming UK General Election.
It would be risky to read too much into such comparisons, due to the
enormous difference in the level of Internet on either side of the
Atlantic.
While more than 50% of the US population have unmetered Internet access,
only a little over 20% of the UK population have any kind of Internet
facility
at home. However, while this will limit the direct effect of an online
campaign
in the UK, it need not necessarily prevent candidates using online
campaigning to create a positive impression through secondary coverage
in
other media.
According to Greg Sedberry, manager of the Bush-Cheney web campaign
who came over to address a recent seminar hosted by the Hansard Society
(http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk), online campaigning allows the
electorate
the chance to "read about you being innovative". To maximise such 'old
media' coverage, Sedbury suggests that campaigners notify journalists by
email when a new function is added to the Internet site.
A campaign's online reach can be greatly boosted by intelligent use of
email,
he said. Email is not only more widely used than the web, but is also a
potent
mechanism for propagating word-of-mouth publicity, a potent force in
political campaigning. Those who choose to receive campaign emails tend
to
be particularly energetic propagators of word of mouth, with most being
either
active party members or journalists.
When composing campaign emails Sedbury suggested people should "put
themselves in the shoes of someone reading their email - you need to
give it
that viral edge". As an example Sedbury mentioned an email composed by
the
Bush-Cheney camp explaining how J.F. Kennedy made it to the Whitehouse
by a margin that could have been easily overturned.
Notwithstanding its potential for gaining wider coverage, candidates may
rightly ask themselves if it is it really worth investing in a US style
Internet
campaign when it will have to be dismantled again only a month later.
While
US presidential campaigns have an ongoing annual expenditure of hundreds
of millions of dollars, parties competing in the UK General Election are
limited to spending just 20 million UK pounds centrally over four to
five
weeks. Individual candidates are limited to a campaign budget of 100,000
UK
Pounds each.
Professor Steven Coleman, chairman of the Hansard Society's e-democracy
programme, predicted that the uncertainties over campaign funding will
be
one of a number of issues that will give rise to legal disputes during
and after
the 2001 General Election.
As Coleman notes out in his report 'Elections in the age of the
Internet', the
US has already had its first online-campaign funding debacle in 1998
with the
'unsolicited' Internet campaign of Leo Smith of Connecticut being deemed
by
the Federal Election Commission to have made a significant contribution
to
the congressional campaign of Charlotte Koskoff. The commission ordered
Mr Smith to register the site as an official election expense but he has
refused
to do so.
Perhaps the most compelling argument for online campaigning was given by
Chris Casey, a web consultant on Hillary Clinton's online senate
campaign,
who said: "If you don't put your campaign online, someone else will."
And
that someone may not be the best-intentioned of people.
One anti-Hillary Clinton site, hillary2000.com, operated throughout of
the
Senate race after the Hillary campaign decided not to pay a
cybersquatter
100,000 US dollars for the URL. Casey and Sedbury agree the best way to
deal with spoof sites is to pre-empt them by buying relevant URL at a
reasonable price and promoting the best URL and email address at every
opportunity.
If unforeseen spoofs do appear, Casey and Sedbury both said the best
policy is
usually to ignore them, because drawing attention to them usually makes
the
problem worse.
UK political heavyweights are already doing a certain amount of
ignoring.
The Daily Telegraph recently pointed out that the
http://www.williamhague.com is apparently operated by a Surrey-based
naturist. Tony Blair has been a little more fortunate with the sitting
tenants at
www.tonyblair.co.uk, the only major Blair-related URL in use, who use
the
site for political discussion.
Ironically, Coleman believes UK politicians could themselves run into
trouble
over the use of certain domain names. Candidates using registered URLs
with
'mp' in them like Ann Widdecombe (http://www.annwiddecombemp.com/)
could have a problem when they lose the right to call themselves MPs
after
Parliament is dissolved for the election.
Ms Widdecombe has a double dilemma since is probably safe to assume that
the owners of one possible alternative, http://www.annwiddecombe.com,
may
be unwilling to part with their site which currently just says: "ann
don't smoke
da reefer", with a link to the UK Cannabis Internet Activitists.
If the US experience can tell the UK anything, it is that online
campaigning is
unlikely to occur without disputes, controversy and threats of legal
action.
New media, same old story.
[Section Three ends]
SECTION FOUR: OPINION
- COPYRIGHT POLICY
TELECOMMUNICATIONS WHITE PAPER A WHITE FLAG ON
COPYRIGHT?
Once upon a time a group of bibliophilic worthies were wont to meet in
Berne, Switzerland with a group of jurisprudential worthies to discuss
intellectual property rights. They discussed rights relating to learned
monographs and, once the port had gone round twice, they occasionally
also
alluded to the novel.
As the years passed, changes occurred: the drinks became paler and
lighter,
the company more mixed and the returns much higher, and they were sent
into
a frenzy by film rights. But nevertheless the old ways still persist in
the Berne
Conventions of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a
special agency of the United Nations.
In the information age, however, these time-honoured conventions are at
last
set to be marginalised by the US-dominated global force for free trade:
the
World Trade Organisation (WTO).
With the arrival of George W. Bush in the White House the Americans will
want to do for their media organisations what they have done through the
WTO for their livestock farmers. As America has a huge advantage of an
English-speaking home market and has established a global market for its
media products it is likely, under the guise of free trade, to try to
eliminate any
form of indigenous online content rules such as those bravely and
correctly
advanced by France.
The prospect of the McDonaldisation of the media is depressing enough
but it
is hardly helped by those whose business it is to resist - our
politicians. The
UK government's recent Communications White Paper, 'A new future for
communications' (http://www.communicationswhitepaper.gov.uk/), had many
worthy things to say about broadcasting but it totally failed to
comprehend the
convergence between broadcasting and publishing: the topic was not
mentioned once.
I recently attended a large meeting of the great and the good (I exclude
myself
from both categories) hosted by the Independent Television Commission to
discuss its response to the white paper. However, I would encourage the
Culture Secretary Chris Smith to ignore what was said that evening, as
the
room was filled with people intent on setting down what we should and
should not be allowed to watch. I grant there is a case for demanding
certain
output from the BBC as it is funded from taxation, but rather than ask
for
education programmes on ITV, why not ask the universities to set up a TV
station?
Well, none of this went down very well as the worthies were only
bothered
with debating whether or not the BBC should come under the remit of the
proposed new 'super-regulator' covering broadcast, telecommunications
and
the Internet - 'Ofcom'. The rest of the world, international
broadcasting,
middlecasting and narrowcasting, never got a look in.
The point here is that if you do want to exclude a country or culture's
indigenous content from the ravages of the World Trade Organization then
public broadcasting has to exist outside the commercial sector, which is
subject to WTO rules. That is precisely why the BBC should not fall
within
Ofcom's authority, but of the more than 200 people in the room I was the
only
one voting for such an idea.
Not satisfied with this demoralising annihilation, I travelled
subsequently to
Amsterdam for an Internet publishing conference, 'The future of
electronic
publishing: the era of unlimited potential' (run by
http://www.marcusevans.com/).
Here, the publishers present were back to Berne, discussing copyright as
if the
new digital technology is likely to care for the small print. I fell
into
conversation with a key figure in European publishing who was more
bothered about competition to European publishers from the BBC than from
Hollywood and Manhattan.
But the truth is that, even with hugely sophisticated and efficient
'micropayment' systems - so that web users could use special software to
make payments of fractions of a penny for accessing particular pages,
painless
to the individual but mounting up for the publisher - the royalties
model of
copyright cannot survive.
So here we have it, a new white paper that is already out of date, an EU
Copyright Directive that was out of date when it was drafted four years
ago
and publishing and broadcasting establishments that are only interested
in the
corpse of My Lord Reith. Even if George W doesn't have the wit to rub
his
hands there are many of his advisers who do.
* Article by Kevin Carey, Director of HumanITy, a charity focusing on
technology and social exclusion (http://www.humanity.org.uk). A full
copy of
his speech to the 'Future of electronic publishing' conference in
Amsterdam
can be found at http://www.humanity.org.uk/events/hiltonam.html
[Section Four ends]
HOW TO RECEIVE E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
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Copyright 2001 Headstar Ltd
The Bulletin may be reproduced in full as long as all parts including
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PERSONNEL:
Editor - Dan Jellinek [log in to unmask]
Deputy Editor - Phil Cain [log in to unmask]
Reporter - Tamara Fletcher [log in to unmask]
A searchable archive of our back-issues can be found on our web site.
[Issue ends]
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