Information society : agenda for action in the UK : evidence received after 31 March 1996 / Select Committee on Science and Technology.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
- Date:
- 1996
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: Information society : agenda for action in the UK : evidence received after 31 March 1996 / Select Committee on Science and Technology. Source: Wellcome Collection.
42/324 page 344
![23 April 1996 ] [Continued Chairman 478. Do you wish to add to that, Ms Drabble? (Ms Drabble) 1 would add simply, my Lord Chairman, if I may, that as Bob has said the licence fee carries with it an undertaking to the general public that we will meet all their interests and all their needs. Certainly from the perspective of education we build our service on the basis of a very close analysis of audience need, totally uncluttered by ratings questions or commercial questions. We are able to use our assets in a very particular way in the public service and I would cite to you particularly a campaign we ran last year to promote adult literacy, a very important area, of course, of education and social need, not an easy subject to get through to the most needy people about. We were able to use BBCI, which is our mass channel where we can reach millions of people, to produce a very, very highly targeted and extremely good looking campaign in association with the Basic Skills Agency, and this resulted in 300,000 people in a week calling in to a free telephone number for a free pack to help them help their children to learn to read and write. That is a good example I think of the sort of thing the BBC is committed to doing and which is part of our obligation because licence payers are paying for a service that they expect to get public service out of. I think there is a very strong case for keeping it. Lord Gregson 479. Public service broadcasting to me implies more than the areas we have covered already. We are gradually in this country moving towards a freedom of information situation. Would you see public service broadcasting as the means of disseminating that sort of information? In other words, you have certain situations where the ordinary citizen wants information of a Government situation, at the moment they go to the Citizens Advice Bureau, would you see your duty in effect, if we had that sort of service available, to provide that sort of information on the Internet? If you do not do it who else would, let us put it that way round? (Mr Phillis) 1 think that the concept of the superhighway certainly provides that opportunity for the nation to access a far wider range of information in the way you outlined. I think our role is very much in providing information which stems from or is related or supports the range of programmes we are responsible for. That does not mean limited simply to the programme content programme by programme but all that additional information which can and should be provided, for example, in relation to our news and current affairs and political coverage, our educational coverage and so on. 480. 1am not talking about that sort of aspect, Iam talking about direct information that the citizen needs and has a right to have. If there is a change to the Social Security Act it can affect millions of people, at the moment it is published in the newspaper probably as a small article or it becomes a leaflet pushed through the door. It is a very, very limited scope compared with America, for instance, where public service broadcasters have a duty in effect to carry this sort of information. (Mr Phillis) 1 think, my Lord Chairman, very clearly the BBC would expect to play the fullest possible part in such a network and such a system. 481. Would it not be an essential part? (Mr Phillis) It is a major part but not something I believe which the BBC could carry alone for two reasons. First of all, I think as a nation we need to have an infrastructure where there are access points to the superhighways, not simply in schools and colleges but also in Citizens Advice Bureaux and libraries and other institutions where the citizen can have access to a terminal and pull down this information. Part of it is an infrastructure situation. 482. Who is the service provider in that case? (Mr Phillis) The service provider I think would be a number of different sources of which the BBC will be one major provider but there are other information providers who would need I think to access and make available such information in addition to the role that we can play ourselves. 483. You are implying, therefore, that people like the Department of Social Security for instance, who have their own method of delivering this information, could become a service provider in themselves or would you have commercial service providers being contacted by such bodies? Does it make sense to you, this duplication when we have a public service broadcasting system? (Mr Phillis) 1 think your line of questioning very much illustrates the importance that there is not a single superhighway but a number of different sources of information which people can make available. If the thrust of your question is should this be freely available to the citizen, yes that is a point that I agree with and we would support, but that is not to deny that there may be other information providers who are making it available. I do not know if, Jane, you would like to say anything? (Ms Drabble) I think what we are starting to see is Government departments and agencies posting information on the Internet for everybody to get access to. I think one role that the BBC can play and increasingly is beginning to play, certainly in the education context on the Internet, if you like, is as a trusted guide. What we do at the moment is provide a range of consumer programmes in the broadest sense of the word which, if you like, process the information or find out the sources of information for people and present them in an easily digestible way, perhaps through the programme or through the fact sheet and so on. I think increasingly what we can do is take people from the programme to a source of digital information, let us say at the moment it is the Internet, and then point people in the direction of other places they can go to find more places that we feel are good quality sources of information for them to search. Baroness Hogg 484. It is often said that the development of information superhighways will lead to disintermediation so following Lord Gregson’s point, because there is access through the World Wide Web toa number of Government sites, the need for an intermediary to perform that role is less apparent I would have thought. In your area of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32218631_0042.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
