At the Information Systems in Government Conference in Brighton this week, the CCTA, formerly the Central Computer & Telecommunications Agency, unveiled a multimedia information kiosk, capable of linking into the Internet. The CCTA is pretty keen on the Internet: around 90% of all UK government information on the Internet is put there by the CCTA, which also runs the Internet Government Information Service. The kiosk itself, slung together within the last eight weeks by the CCTA with IBM Corp’s help, is no great technical triumph: OS/2 is the operating system and the screen is a standard touch-screen affair. What is new is the Smart Card reader attached to the kiosk, which enables users to access the Internet, but this prototype had no keyboard and so users could not input anything. The CCTA says it is really up to the organisation installing multimedia kiosks to decide what sort of configuration the system has and this is partly the problem with the CCTA’s theory about multimedia kiosks. Although pilot trials have been taking place throughout the UK – the Benefits Agency has one in Bournemouth; Oxford County Council has developed several applications providing information about it and its work for several hundred kiosks; and Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council has also developed applications – the CCTA believes major investment is needed to roll out the concept into a living system whereby the British public can have easy access to government information from multimedia kiosks located in government buildings. And that money is not forthcoming from the government. The other thing that is holding back the UK government’s headlong rush onto the Internet is issues of security. CCTA’s director, Roy Dibble, said that once these issues we re resolved he expected a major rush onto the Internet.
