ECW3
Office Futures

ECW3
Issue 3, October 12, 1999

+++UK government waking up to electronic working?
+++Struggling towards an e-commerce policy: more notes from a small island
+++Norwegian Patent No Troll
+++Journos remember has-beenz
+++About eComWatch


+++UK government waking up to electronic working?

In a speech at Cambridge last month, the Prime Minister announced his two project managers for the task of e-everythinging Britain, especially its government. There will be, in Blairspeak, "a single lead Minister and a single lead official", whose job will be to help the government "act faster and co-ordinate better". This was one of seven ground rules that, according to the PM, should be adopted by governments in the "knowledge economy". The others were to:
use self-regulation (i.e. permit and encourage it)
get trained (i.e. promote training)
get the infrastructure "right"
build trust
lead by example, and
think European.

Quite how that last one would help an African or South American country is hard to work out but these otherwise seem worthy aspirations. They also form a handy set of criteria against which the rest of us can judge this government's future performance. A report on this will be issued annually, said the Prime Minister.

The "E-Minister" is Patricia Hewitt, on transfer from the Treasury, where she was Economic Secretary, looking after matters in the City. She is now in the Department of Trade and Industry, as Minister for Small Business and E-Commerce. There, she is also responsible for, among other things, "the information society" and the Radiocommunications Agency, which allots radio frequencies.

Miss Hewitt (in fact, Mrs William Birtles) is an Australian by birth, holding dual nationality, and was educated there and at Cambridge University. Before becoming an MP, in 1997, she made a career in social justice, having worked at various times for Age Concern, the then National Council for Civil Liberties, where she rose to the post of General Secretary, and the Institute for Public Policy Research. She then switched to one of the uncaring professions, going off to be director of research in Andersen Consulting, after which she became Neil Kinnock's press secretary. She has been promoted rapidly in this government and is tipped for Cabinet post before long.

The other, and widely trailed, appointment was of Alex Allen to the job of "E-Envoy". Allen is presently British High Commissioner (ambassador, in effect) to Australia, in which post he will stay until the end of the year. Much play has been made in the press of Allen's devotion to the works of a defunct American popular rhythm combo. For some reason, this is held to denote some form of cyber-hipness, and thus a special aptitude for the task of encouraging the progress to 'joined up' government. One might just as well be addicted to Clementi's piano sonatas.

Much more relevant are the other facts of Allen's background. He read mathematics at university, in contrast to the classics or PP&E chosen by the traditional technophobic senior civil servant, and for a while was a freelance computer consultant, also in Australia. His wife is Australian, too. Allen knows his way around Downing Street, having been Principal Private Secretary to John Major and then Tony Blair. Also, he can be assumed to have good family and social connexions, being the son of Lord Allan of Kilmahew and educated at Harrow and Cambridge. (The BBC's Web site hilariously describes him as having "worked his way up through the civil service". From the lowest level, no doubt, much as the archetypal mill-owner's son works his way up to ownership of pater's company.)

Alex Allen is unusual among senior civil servants in having his own Web site (http://www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/). Many are loath to use even officially-provided ones. In fact, the whole culture of the senior civil service is antithetical, if not antipathetic, to the speed and openness of communication that electronic working can bring. In an outspoken interview in the Public Management Foundation's Stakeholder Journal (see http://www.pmfoundation.org.uk/sj_latest.htm), Michael Bichard, Permanent Secretary of the Department for Education and Employment, said this:

"If you were to put down the things that stifle creativity in a single column, you would have a good description of the way in which the civil service has traditionally worked: a 'word-based' culture, hierarchical, exclusive, doesn't work across departments, doesn't involve outsiders. There's an absolute classic correlation throughout."

He also points out that "no one, in the past, has effectively set targets for permanent secretaries and held them accountable for those targets. No one has rigorously assessed how permanent secretaries were leading and managing their departments."

Bichard is unusual in having joined the senior civil service directly by openly advertised post, from local government, and has espoused a Blairite agenda for change. No surprisingly, as the article points out, the permanent secretaries' club has subsequently tried to close ranks. Whether Bichard and Allen and their like can dent the ironclad complacence of the mandarins is one of the games within a game well worth watching in the life of this government.

Members of Parliament are individually less secure in their posts than senior civil servants -- no guaranteed 'K' or comfortable pension for them, and they get assessed at least every five years -- but as a group they are seemingly no more willing to embrace modern communication methods (apart from the front benchers' notorious bleepers). Most do not even have an email address (see http://www.ukpol.co.uk/email.htm for a recent list of the few who do), let alone a Web site. Ms Hewitt was similarly incommunicado until her new appointment but can now be reached at e.minister@dti.gov.uk. (Conversely, her patron, the monodigital Mr Blair, used to have an email address but now hasn't, oddly.) It would seem, in fact, that, unlike Allen, Hewitt was chosen for her all round cleverness and capabilities than for any technical bent or interest.

For instance, a search of Hansard at the parliamentary Web site ( http://www.parliament.uk/) shows only nine entries under her name which include the word "Internet", none of them relating to ecommerce. Perhaps neither topic was thought worthy of mention in connection with economics or the City, her responsibilities during this time.

'Trish' has a bright new job now, though, and if words mean anything, she is off to a good start in it. At a conference on 7 October, she announced that there will be guidelines published next month for the design and operation of the Government's Web sites. These are intended to promote government branding, better links between sites and easier navigation, including for the disabled.

Also, says the Cabinet Office press release, having good Web sites is intended to encourage "the development of excellence in departmental business processes". A lot of people would love to know how that particular sleight of hand works.

The guidelines are available, in draft form, at http://www.iagchampions.gov.uk/whatsnew.htm. It is a document worth reading by any organization with even just one Web site. Any organization with several sites would also benefit from compiling and distributing something similar for use by all its Web masters, mistresses and prefects.

(One hopes the DTI, the E-Minister's department, will heed the advice in Section 2.2 of the draft: "Government websites will need to be updated frequently and maintained constantly". Its own page on ecommerce, at http://www.dti.gov.uk/cii/electronic.html, was last updated over three months ago.)

One gets the feeling that this government is genuinely intent on modernising the civil service and on enabling Britain to compete in the world of electronic trading. The two 'whizzes from Oz' that the Prime Minster has put in place look as competent as anyone to start bringing both about. Meanwhile, Ms Hewitt has the tricky task of bringing forward a controversial ecommerce bill that contains threats to personal and business privacy as severe any she will have faced when she was a campaigner for personal liberty. eComWatch will be reviewing her and its progress in a future issue.

-oOo-

+++Struggling towards an e-commerce policy: more notes from a small island

Here in Canada's smallest province (population 137,000) the government struggles with many of the same issues as Tony Blair, but with far fewer resources and a great deal less power. This could be a good thing: so far we have been spared the almost Stalinist urges of Jack Straw and government paranoia that citizens in a democracy might actually communicate in a way the secret police can't eavesdrop. Nor is there any Patricia Hewlitt figure. Gosh, the blessings we enjoy!

Our local telco announced that it had decided it was a world-class provider of Web services. Unfortunately, it seems the only person who didn't immediately fall about laughing was the Technology Minister.

Fortunately, Bell Canada (doubtless feeling the need to increase its e-commerce expertise) just announced that it would gobble our telco up (or rather gobble up the consortium of Maritime province telcos which already owned our little telco). Understandably, the bureaucrats, who for years followed the local equivalent of Michael Foot's immortal recipe for industrial policy (find out what the unions want and give it to them), are a little miffed.

Our little island has among the highest internet penetration rates in the world. The number of web design companies comes close to outnumbering the potential base of clients able to contemplate web budgets in excess of $1,000 a year. We have an excellent technical college which pumps out young people of frightening competence. To keep both, the province must export its services and expertise.

Our economy is based on agriculture, fishing and tourism: a large part of our work force works just over three months a year. The government really needs the IT sector to pay off: if the Web negates distance, they argue, surely we can become a significant nexus in the new information economy.

Unfortunately, government policy has come down on the wrong side of the following value pairs: hierarchical  peer to peer; proprietary  open standards; behind closed doors  transparent; top down  bottom up; oriented to public sector  oriented to private sector; local market - world market; expensive  low cost; large  small; repackaging - innovation. Policy has largely been developed in response to the input and needs of the largest local IT shop, an Oracle developer, and the local telco. The majority of contracts placed by the public sector (overwhelmingly the largest purchaser of IT services) seem to end up with firms owned by former officials. It's all very cosy, very small town.

It could be otherwise. Where else (bar a Gulf emirate) can just about any citizen pick up the phone and talk to the Premier? Where else can a small firm call the top departmental official with the reasonable expectation of a return call and an early meeting? We advertised for some network technicians last week and had a dozen quality replies over the weekend. Unlike Blairite Britain, we can and do wander in to harass senior bureaucrats about their policies. We aren't winning  yet. But should the government ever decide that a bottom up policy makes sense, PEI could suddenly become a very exciting place.

It will surprise many that one of the key forces challenging the prevailing order is the local public sector union. In an Op-Ed piece in the local paper, which immediately drew indignant replies from both the Minister and a joint epistle (imagine!) from the telco and the Oracle developer, the Chair of the union's IT committee claimed the emperor had no clothes and argued that the focus of government IT policy should be the creation and support of a vibrant small firms sector. Maybe Mr Bickerstaffe has been making similarly impassioned pleas in The Grauniad - it's very easy to get out of touch here. But if he hasn't, maybe he should. [He hasn't. In fact, Rodney Bickerstaffe's union, Unison, seems more interested in pushing its free Internet access deal to its members - see http://www.unison.org.uk  RGW]

In the meantime, it's fascinating to watch a challenge to a corporatist IT policy and a demand for an agenda based on startups and small firms being articulated by a public sector union.

-oOo-

+++Norwegian Patent No Troll

Scandinavian ISPs and systems suppliers are in a state of alarm at the awarding of a patent governing online commerce to the Norwegian businessman, Rolf Wilhelmsen. In 1993, he applied to the Norwegian patent office, and subsequently to various European ones, for a patent covering real-time, catalogue-style shopping for services over an open network. The application has now been granted and Wilhelmsen is apparently saying that it will apply to all Web-based ecommerce. "Open your wallet and say after me, 'Help yourself'" is the gist of the conversation he hopes to be having with just about anybody in, on or around e-commerce*.

I have had a look at the application, EP0738446 Method and System for Ordering Services, at the European Patent Office's server ( http://ep.espacenet.com/). Here is the abstract:

In a method for ordering services, like booking hotel rooms, the ordering is performed via a user terminal connected to a central data processing device. A service request is specified and information of a service is retrieved from a base in the central data processing device.

When a given service offer is selected, a connection is automatically established between the user terminal and a service location terminal via the central data processing device, whereupon the desired service can be ordered and the order confirmed. Further orders can be placed before the connection is broken. When an order has been made the data base is automatically updated from the service location. A system is also specified for implementing the method. In a telemarketing system, a suitable user terminal may be a touch-tone telephone. The user terminal may also be a dedicated terminal with software for specifying the order.

To my inexpert eye this looks like a fair, if generalised, description of online booking and is potentially applicable to the World Wide Web. What is clear, though, is that neither the inventor, a Harald Ïhrns, nor Wilhelmsen had the Web in mind when filing this application. There is no mention in it of the Internet, TCP/IP or World Wide Web, despite the European application's being made only last year. Even in 1993 the Web was well established, this being the year the Mosaic browser was launched.

The patent seems, instead, to be based on telephone-based selling of services, such as hotel booking. Indeed, the examples given in the patent document refer constantly to this, citing in its examples Wilhelmsen's company, Bellboy International AS. There is some mention of data communications but only as an adjunct to a voice system, as in this reference to when "a local data processing system is connected via a modem with central data processing device via the second telecommunication network..." (my emboldening).

It is this element that eForum, the Norwegian ecommerce trade group, hopes will be the weakness in Wilhelmsen's claim. I spoke to its director, Agnes Beathe Steen Fosse, who makes the point that, whereas he is stressing process, the forum argues that, to be applicable, the patent should cover both process and system. Rolf Wilhelmsen has now filed claims in the USA and Japan, where eForum is hoping to enlist the aid of CommerceNet ( http://www.commerce.net) in contesting his claim. Ms Fosse says that if the group is successful in these countries' courts, it will stand a better chance of limiting the patent's applicability in its own country.

It was clear from our conversation that eForum is disappointed that the Norwegian patent office should have approved what it sees as such a vague application. There seems some justification for this; the proposed system is very similar to what was being done as far back as the early 1980s on the British Prestel and the French Minitel services. Agnes Fosse was, however, honest enough to admit that both her organization and the various suppliers that Wilhelmsen is now targeting should have paid more attention to the patent when it was in process. One gets the impression of a mad dash to slam shut Scandinavian stable doors.

Meanwhile, Rolf Wilhemsen, who doesn't even seem to have a Web site, must be seeing Krone, Dollars and Yen everywhere he looks, especially across the Atlantic. Indeed, there is already an American patent applied for this year in the name of Wilhelmsen. Nothing to do with ecommerce, it is in fact for "A device for handling empty beverage containers". Someone's planning a heck of a party!

Notes:

1. (For new bugs) As well as being an unfriendly creature of Nordic folklore, a troll is a message on Usenet designed to attract outraged responses or 'flames'. As The Jargon File (aka The New Hacker's Dictionary) puts it, "The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it." Just like being at school, really.

2. *Forget the current Monty Python revival -- they're nobbut lads who don't know they're born -- this cobwebby line is from The Goon Show, c. 1950.

-oOo-

+++Journos remember has-beenz

Not everything that tekkie journos know makes it into print.

Net start-up Beenz ( http://www.beenz.com) is a bold adventure to create a Web currency ("The Web's currency" as it modestly styles itself). Chairman and CEO and Acting President of Beenz America is one Philip Letts, late CEO of Cambridge Market Intelligence (1992 -1997). Phil's Web bio says "In 1992, he co-founded CMI, a business publishing and marketing IT management research firm which became one of the first businesses to launch a broad Internet online information service for IT Management."

A number of leading IT journos were recruited to provide said service. Your humble editors, indeed, were toilers in Phil's vineyard.

"There came a time" as the lawyers say, when payments dried up. And when many months had passed with no currency reaching their ink-stained hands, they laid down their pens. After much to-ing and fro-ing, a phoenix CMI arose and the bitter scribes departed with a payment amounting to the VAT on their original invoices.

That band of warriors is now scattered over many publications, but each time a piece puffing Beenz appears, it rapidly makes the rounds with appropriate commentary. Our lawyers are of far too tender dispositions to permit us to reprint any of the scurrilous and undoubtedly false babblings of embittered hacks about the alleged gap between the claims and the truth of our Phil's performance at his pre-Beenz employers: suffice it to say your editors have not felt obliged to dash over to Beenz to sign up.

-oOo-


About eComWatch
eComWatch is edited and published by Roger Whitehead and Christopher Ogg. Copyright Roger Whitehead and Christopher Ogg, 2002. eComWatch may be circulated freely in its original format with copyright notice intact. For permission to reproduce any article,