Comment: Room for online improvement

The Information Age Partnership was set up to develop a dialogue between the private sector and UK government on IT policy matters. It is chaired by the secretary of state for trade and industry, Patricia Hewitt, and brings together ministers, senior civil servants and executives from across the information, technology, electronics and communications supply chains.

It has just published a benchmarking report, rating the UK's online performance against eight other leading countries. The World's Most Effective Policies for the E-economy was compiled with input from policy makers from the G7 nations (UK, US, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Japan) plus Australia and Sweden.

The report says the UK has a lead in terms of education and the National Grid for Learning, with 98 percent of UK schools linked to the Web. Along with Japan, Italy and Australia, the UK comes top for "political and regulatory leadership" in steering the online agenda.

The UK also scores highly with its Government Gateway project for putting government services online, and has the most effective business support with its UK Online for Business project. Furthermore, the government has a lead in simple e-procurement - the Government Procurement Card was issued to departments in 1997 to enable them to purchase low-value items online.

But the UK won no plaudits for broadband infrastructure. Australia and Sweden were singled out for closing the digital divide between urban and rural areas - Sweden's Broadband for Rural Areas Programme provides £550m to support broadband rollout in remote areas through grants, tax relief and local-loop unbundling - opening up local telecoms links to rivals. Canada is another country with a lead: it enjoys low broadband prices, and the highest availability.

Japanese consumers enjoy the cheapest DSL broadband, thanks to the unbundling and a regulator that has not allowed the incumbent carrier to delay DSL development to protect lucrative ISDN business. In Italy, good planning has accelerated infrastructure development and cut costs, backed by government spending, tax breaks and low-rate loans.

Meanwhile, the third annual report on the UK Online project says Oftel will continue opening up BT's network to encourage "flourishing" competition and a wider choice of broadband services, and will monitor the rollout of services, paying particular attention to interconnection and unbundling. Oftel will keep tabs on the terms of BT's broadband services to ensure rivals can compete with it, and will benchmark the costs of dial-up and broadband Internet access in the UK against leading competitor countries.

The DTI and OGC will set up a UK Broadband Taskforce to encourage the rollout of services in rural areas, and will act to ensure that public-sector procurement of broadband does as much as possible to encourage regional economic development.

All in all, a good week for benchmarking.

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