On the day when UK Prime Minister Tony Blair re-launched the Downing Street web site and announced he would take questions live on the internet during an interview with the public on the 29th of this month, (although he virtually admitted he is not particularly computer literate himself), the UK government yesterday unveiled ‘Our Information Age’, described as a coherent strategy to help Britain take the lead in the information age. It has also announced the provision of some new money for buying notebook computers for teachers and digitizing content for public libraries. The strategy is basically a pulling together of various government initiatives already announced, such as the 100m pounds it said it was putting into the National Grid for Learning (CI No 3,262), a scheme to get all UK schools and universities hooked up to the internet by 2002, and the plan to get all public libraries offering internet access over the next seven or so years (CI No 3,269). Margaret Beckett, president of the UK Board of Trade, said the document outlining Our Information Age was an extremely important document and she believes the successful use of technology is one of the UK’s biggest challenges, and biggest opportunities also. The strategy incorporates five facets; education; wide access to all – to prevent creating a society of information haves and have nots ; quality of service – by which it means a commitment to digital broadcasting as well as censoring content to keep up quality standards; and modernization of government systems. Beckett also announced a new Information Age Partnership, under which it will bring in chief executives from major companies to work with government to help exploit the use of technology, particularly in areas such as electronic commerce. Our Information Age has an ambitious set of targets, Beckett said, which include doubling the number of schools connected to the National Grid by the end of this year, doubling the number of IT for All sites – public access kiosks in public locations – to 4,000 by the end of the year, doubling the number of small and medium businesses who are making effective use of new technologies by 2001, having all schools, libraries, colleges and universities linked to the grid by 2002 and 25% of government services available electronically by that date. The government also committed yesterday to providing 50m pounds of National Lottery money on digitizing content for libraries, 20m pounds for training every public librarian, a 6m pound challenge fund for library projects, and 23m pounds to purchase some 10,000 multimedia notebook computers for senior teachers, to enable them to learn and familiarize themselves with the technology.
