[ARCHIVED CONTENT] The 1998 Competitiveness White Paper

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Next steps

Driving forward change

4.1 The programme of action announced in the Competitiveness White Paper represents only the first steps in the Government's drive to make the UK a world leader in the digital economy. As described in Chapter 3, a cross-departmental project on e-commerce will report to the Prime Minister by Summer 1999, and the new e-Envoy will be driving forward proposals for further change.

How can we measure success?

4.2 One of the first tasks for the e-Envoy will be to develop a framework for measuring progress towards the Government's goal of achieving the best environment in the world for electronic commerce. The detailed data set out in the appendix to this report represent a useful set of indicators, but do not give an aggregated view of the UK's overall performance. The Government wishes to develop a robust tool for measuring performance in this area, and will ask the e-Envoy to develop one in consultation with business. The Government will then publish the results of this on an annual basis.

4.3 One approach to measuring success could be to build on the analysis done by the Information Age Partnership, developing a basket of measures based on indices of performance indicators for each of the critical success factors they identified. The IAP did this on a qualitative basis, as illustrated in the box on the following page, giving a subjective but informed industry view of where the UK stands.

How can you get involved?

4.4 We need to take up the challenge of the future. Only business can deliver prosperity and jobs. Government must know when to act, and when to keep out of the way. The Secretary of State has said that if business needs to draw his attention to any actions in central government that are holding back enterprise, it should contact him by writing to: The Rt Hon Peter Mandelson MP
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
Department of Trade and Industry
1-19 Victoria Street
London SW1H 0ET
or by e-mail on: comp.unit@cudv.dti.gov.uk

Benchmarking the digital economy: a business view

The Information Age Partnership summarised its own view of the UK's overall position on each of the success factors they had identified (see Figure 7) by ranking the UK, the world leader and the average performance of leading digital economies on a subjective scale of 1 to 10. The results are illustrated at Figure 8. The Information Age Partnership's benchmarking task group concluded that this highlighted four priority areas for action. These - along with a summary of the group's conclusions - were:

Culture: "A culture which values ICTs is probably the single most significant driver of success. The UK is well placed, with potential to grow strongly and leapfrog the US."

Price: "While the UK's pricing performance is patchy, it underperforms in areas of key importance to the growth of e-commerce - notably Internet access costs."

User skills: "While the UK populace is unable to use IT equipment effectively, the market place will not grow to its full potential."

Supply side skills: "Countries which are best able to solve skill shortages in these sectors will have major competitive advantages."

Figure 8 Benchmarking the digital economy: a business view