Figures just produced by the UK's Oftel (the telecoms regulator) show that the the percentage of UK households online is more or less the same as it was a year ago - 42 percent. The UK seems to be following the US into a situation where all those who want to be online are already connected. The figure has interesting implications for the UK's Labour government, though. It has a strategy of moving to delivering government services online, but these figures imply that if it does so, it will only reach two out of five of the population.

The point of 'e-government' is that it is supposed to be cheaper to deliver (being more 'hip' is a bonus, but not the point). That's probably true. It is cheaper than the traditional face-to-face methods. But that equation only works if you can completely replace the traditional system with the new electronic system. If you have to run both systems simultaneously, then you don't have a cheaper service, you have a more expensive one!

The truth is that the Internet is not a 'must have' service for a large number of people, even in heavily wired countries like the US and Europe. Many people only use it for free email, but such use is becoming of marginal utility as the flood of spam grows into an overwhelming torrent. Furthermore, the ongoing demise of free email providers is providing online users with an opportunity to take stock of the Internet's usefulness. It seems likely that a significant fraction of existing online users may decide that the game isn't worth a candle and go offline.

The UK is far from being the only state planning to deliver government services and voting online in the near future (although the UK may be spared by the government's chronic inability to deliver -any- major software project on time or within budget). In all these cases the original assumptions were built into the scenario during the heady days of the dot com boom. In those days it was taken as self evident that within a few years all except a tiny minority of the population would be frantically surfing the net.

Now that it's obvious that this is not the case, and that maybe even a majority of the population has no interest in using the Internet. Unfortunately, no attempt has been made to re-evaluate the underlying assumptions of e-government. I suspect such a re-evaluation is urgently needed, otherwise the costs of government are going to rise dramatically again, or we are going to create a new digital underclass of second class citizens.

It's not a pleasant scenario, and in the UK it's going to present the government with some unpleasant choices. But it's one that even the Labour government, despite its legendary ability to duck and weave, is going to have to face sooner or later.

Alan Lenton
February 9, 2003

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29190.html

Update:

Recent research in the US throws some interesting light on the offline phenomena.

In the US the population of the Internet stopped growing in about 2001, at which time the number of people coming on-line became equal to those going offline. The split is roughly 60/40 percent online/offline. The really interesting thing is that about 20 percent of those offline have Internet access in the next room, but choose not to go online, or get other family member to go online for them.

About 27 percent of Americans have never tried to go online and have no intention of trying.

The bottom line? E-government in the US is something that is only currently aimed at 60 percent of the population. Furthermore, if what people told the study about their future plans is correct, e-government can never, even in ideal circumstances, reach more than 77 percent of its citizens.

This is just as relevant for the UK as it is for the US. Time for a rethink.

http://go.hotwired.com/news/technology/0,1282,58498,00.html/wn_ascii

AL April 20 2003

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