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Stephen Timms MPLaunch of Oxford Internet Institute |
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It is an immense privilege to be here this morning for this launch and to be joining such an illustrious gathering to celebrate it. Let me begin by paying a tribute to those whose contributions have enabled this success to be realised today:
The remit of the Institute is bold and ambitious: "to study the impact of the internet on society". People who work in this industry are sometimes characterised as techies with little interest in what is happening in society. It is my strong impression that, if that was ever true, it is not true today. Last Friday, I was in the company of another group from the ICT industry interested in what is happening in society. We were taking part in the annual Byte Night event – 130 of us sleeping rough in Finsbury Square in the City of London to raise funds for the work of NCH among homeless young people. Some who took part are also here today – including Phil Smith of Cisco Systems who is speaking later on. People in this industry do want to contribute to the well being of our society, and in a very different way from Byte Night, but in a profoundly important way, the creation of this Institute provides an opportunity for them to do so. It comes as a surprise to be reminded that the first time the British Government used the term 'Knowledge Economy' was three years ago. At the time I was a Minister at the Treasury and I was startled on visiting California to see that every advertising bill board carried a web address – as six months later they did in Britain too. Silicon Valley at the time abounded with stories like the one about the Chinese takeaway proprietor who, taking pity on the penniless dot com entrepreneurs working in the lock up shop next door, accepted payment for their lunches in the form of shares rather than cash – and within a year was a millionaire. We paid a reverential visit to the suburban garage where Hewlett and Packard had started it all by setting up their business in the 1930s – and enthusiasm was everywhere. And now, after the crash, where do we stand? We can see today, after the dust has settled, that there are compelling reasons for doing business electronically. Fast and effective communications promote better business relationships, faster innovation and greater efficiency. Trading on the internet promises greater market penetration, increased customer response, more flexibility and lower costs. Better and smarter working provides competitive advantage. Small businesses can forge closer relationships with customers and suppliers. I recently presented the prizes in the e-commerce awards which are supported by the DTI through our UK Online for Business project. The overall winner for the smartness of the way it had built its business around web capabilities was a firm in Glasgow called Global Recycling which brokers trades between members in the recycling industry in 80 countries. As I presented the award to the Managing Director I asked him if any of his colleagues had come with him. He replied: "No, the other person had had to stay behind to keep the business going". There are through the Internet immense opportunities for small and innovative firms. UK online for business is a partnership between industry and government geared to help in particular small and medium sized enterprises reap the full benefits of the Internet. It has a highly successful website, attracting nearly 2 million hits in May and June this year alone and an average of 17,000 unique visitors per month. The partnership enables us to work with the best resources from the public and private sectors to open up and develop new channels of communication with the UK business community, and expand the reach and impact of the e-business message. At the beginning of this year nearly ten million households in the UK could access the Internet. Virtually all UK schools are now online and all public libraries and 95% of UK businesses have Internet access. UK competition policies have led to some of the lowest internet access prices in the world and we are on target to deliver over 6000 UK online centres across the country, offering Internet access to all. By the end of the year we estimate 95% of households will be within three miles of a Public Internet Access Point. We have set ourselves the goal of having all Government services available online by 2005, enabling access to everything from NHS medical advice and returning your tax form, to searching for job vacancies and checking the local air quality. It is transforming the way we all live. A study of the social impacts of the Internet cannot be confined to the UK or to the industrialised economies. I discussed last week with the Indian High Commissioner how development of the Internet has led to huge economic growth in Bangalore, with large scale software development serving the US and UK market too. British firms like Dame Stephanie's from Xansa have set up software development centres in India and Indian firms like the Tata group have invested in the UK. Now comparable developments are appearing in other Indian cities, and in Karachi in Pakistan and Colombo in Sri Lanka where there is a new optimism around the prospects for peace. And the very close ties between many in Britain and those other areas of the developing world do I believe represent an important opportunity for the UK and for India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka too. I don't underestimate the challenges which remain in making the Internet work for the world's poor, but here at least is an example where we can see it happening. In the UK, we face clear challenges. We need to exploit our superb science base and promote innovation to create world-class ideas, breakthrough technologies and high value businesses. Firms need to master the art of innovation. Where product lead times are becoming shorter, companies need constantly to develop and adopt the best products and practices available. Businesses need both to collaborate and to compete, to share ideas, to invest in research and development and to take informed risks. They need to take up the new digital technologies and exploit the opportunities of e-commerce. The Prime Minister has set a goal to make Britain the best place in the world to do e-commerce. Universities must become better integrated in the economy, developing stronger links with business and commercial applications for their research. We need to encourage initiatives like this one, and help people adapt to fast-changing markets and shifting work patterns so that they don't have to sacrifice their quality of life. It is the task of the government, businesses trade unions and researchers to help lead people through this process of change and to do it by working together. I see this Institute – the first of its kind in the world – playing a key role. One of my responsibilities at the Department is for the development of broadband communications. We have waited a long time in the UK to see benefits from telecommunications infrastructure competition, and we were slow to make a start with broadband. But, thanks to competition between the telephone and cable networks, we now have broadband prices among the most competitive in the world, and broadband connections being sold at 20,000 per week – roughly half and half between cable modems and telephony DSL connections. Within a fortnight I expect us to be able to celebrate the one millionth broadband connection in the UK. During the autumn, a new Regional Broadband Unit will open for business. Working closely with the Regional Development Agencies and the Office for Government Commerce to co-ordinate public sector broadband procurement, its purpose will be to stimulate economic development and enhance the delivery of public services. The new unit will work between public and private sectors, to ensure best use is made of public sector purchasing and identify opportunities to aggregate public sector broadband demand, so maximising the potential to extend the reach of broadband services. There are big public policy challenges here of a kind that I look forward to the Institute shedding some light on. Following the Chancellor's budget announcements earlier this year, we will have funding in place for a new health services communications infrastructure. It will provide a faster network access to every doctor and to all support staff, and a larger bandwidth across NHSnet gateways. The result will be better local health services. 16% of all schools in England had broadband connections by last April. This figure is continuing to rise further as broadband services become more reachable. We will see more and more curriculum material online, improving the quality of teaching and learning – so that for example students will be able to follow online at their own pace courses for which there is insufficient demand in their school for a separate taught class. If schools, surgeries and government offices in an area all want to connect to broadband, then suppliers can be persuaded to install broadband locally, so extending the infrastructure. It is interesting to see at the moment how local community campaigns around the country are proving effective in pressuring the suppliers to deliver broadband and marshalling the demand to make it worthwhile. >Our strategy is aimed at giving everybody the opportunity to benefit from the development of the Internet. If you go into the Jobcentre in Oxford this morning, you will find not those awful old boards with scruffy little postcards about local jobs, but smart kiosks providing much more information in frankly a much more respectful way about jobs not just in Oxford but right across the country. Those kiosks are part of the reason why unemployment fell again last month, despite everything that is happening in the world economy, to the lowest level for twenty-seven years. It is a good example of how we can use the new technology to benefit those who have been on the wrong end of the rich / poor divide in the past and ensure that we do not put a new digital divide in its place. We will need many more examples like that in the future. There are a host of tough policy challenges for the Institute to help us with. The recent anniversary of the September 11th attacks on New York saw a renewed debate around the right of Governments to monitor e-mails and web browsing. We need to work out how to balance protecting national security with the right of all citizens to privacy and the economic imperative of promoting rather than impeding the exploitation of the new technologies. How do we build trust in Internet commerce? The American Internet pioneer JCR Licklider, in a remarkably prescient article in 1968, wrote that what he called the interconnected electronic network would be a boon to mankind so long as being online was a right rather than a privilege. How do we ensure everyone has access? How do we use the Internet to engage people more effectively in how they are governed? The Office of National Statistics has been gathering information on Internet penetration for some time and is expanding its work to explore the impact of the Internet on society in the UK and internationally. It is studying the social and economic change which have resulted, focusing in particular on the emergence of new ICT-related occupations, and on the effects on those not in a position to use the Internet. I hope that the work of the Office will provide useful material for the work of this Institute, and I am certain that the work of the Institute will be immensely valuable in our work on public policy. We shall be keen to keep closely in touch. I am delighted to have been able to take part in today's launch and want to conclude simply by reiterating our enthusiasm for this initiative and by wishing the Institute every success in the future – a wish which I am certain will be fulfilled. Thank you. |
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Other speeches by Stephen Timms MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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