Martha, money and Mrs Buggins

From Charles Arthur at The Grauniad:

The founder of lastminute.com, Martha Lane Fox, has unveiled an ambitious policy to get everyone in Britain online by 2012, backed by a study that says it would save the government up to £1bn annually in customer service costs and boost the economy by more than £20bn.

.............

Now she says the UK should aim to have everyone online by 2012 – by the London Olympics – and pledged to publish interim annual targets so that progress can be measured against them.

Even better,

The government would also benefit enormously, by about £900m annually, if everyone who is presently unconnected used its online services just once a month, Lane Fox noted. She is talking to government departments to try to push the benefits they could see from this – although the DITF [Digital Inclusion Task Force, Ms Fox's Quango] does not have access to any funding to pay for computers for these groups.

Wot, no funding - thats really going to fly then...... (One assumes the quango itself is comfortably funded of course, I note its even started distributing computers )

Also, I recall the Digital Britain debates earlier this year, and the slow, grudging realisation that a lot of people in the UK have absolutely no intention of getting online. (This report says c 1/6th of people are in this category, but its up to a third depending on who you talk to - bear in mind that UK broadband internet penetration has plateau'd at about the 66% level) And believe me, there is a strong lobby ensuring that their existing services will not be forgotten. So, how to persuade these latter day luddites? Getting Mrs Buggins online is no easy task:

"It works when someone who's like you shows you that there's something in the technology for you," she said. "My blonde white middle class voice isn't going to be resonant at all with this end group of users, but if your next-door neighbour has had a great impact with technology, is or someone at the school gate says 'I saved all this money by being online', then that's when it's powerful, so building up these peer to peer networks is very important."

Problem is, the cost of building those peer to peer networks would potentially be huge. Who will do it? How will they be funded in a Post Crunch economy?

Observing what has happened in the past gives some indication of what will most likely happen now:

- Older systems hang on for a long time, live with it - those 100% based savings are illusory in the short term.
- New systems are allowed to move on without blanket Universal Service Obligations, they are implemented via Universal Service Access (ie think telephone boxes - I'd stick internet terminals in public libraries) to ensure it is possible to capture savings from those who can use the new technology
- The "withouts" get economically shafted eventually, or as Ms Fox genteelly puts it:

"It's often the people facing the toughest times who have the most to gain from what technology has to offer," Lane Fox said. "And as the internet is rapidly becoming a tool for everyday life, we should work together to make sure everyone can benefit."

Paper Tax by 2012, we wonder - anyone offering odds?

But then if it were me, I'd shut down all the quangos and pay for more nurses and so on - but that'd never fly........