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.
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![23 April 1996 ] [ Continued the needs of children in remote locations. The distinctions between education and leisure will break down. Education will increasingly become a lifetime experience rather than simply being wasted on the young! Telemedicine will also come into its own. GP surgeries and minor injuries units will be connected to remote expertise at major hospitals; medical consultations will take place over ISDN links; foetal heart scans will be transmitted to centres of neo-natal care; prescription databases will take some of the pain out of medical administration. Public information services will be transformed. Communication between the public and a whole range of public bodies will be enhanced and speeded up. Social services could free up resources to focus on more personal care. There might be remote, unobtrusive monitoring of the elderly or people with disabilities, thus giving them more autonomy, significantly enhancing quality of life while reducing the cost of care. Financial and commercial applications will help to stimulate a more efficient and dynamic economy. The “virtual office” will become realities. Teleworking will help to relieve the pressure on city infrastructure and help to create opportunities for an improved quality of life. I have, perhaps, been somewhat disingenuous in my use of the future tense. All the innovations I have mentioned, BT offers in one form or another now—all have reached at least the technology trial stage. In the education field, for example, our offerings include CampusWorld, an Internet-based education resource service, matched to educational curricula, accessed at local rates and used by more than 2,500 schools. Telemedicine is one of the wide range of applications for the CamNet “telepresence” system you saw earlier. A conventional audio headset mounted with a miniature TV camera and viewing screen, enables a doctor at a remote site to instruct paramedics at the scene of an accident. We are currently conducting a large-scale marketing trial of Interactive services in East Anglia, including a local information service, educational programming, shopping, banking, and movies and music on demand. The technology is there now and it works. I could go on, but subjecting you to a third BT commercial in one morning might be pushing my luck! The point that I really want to make is that if BT—and, indeed, the UK—s to play a key role as a producer rather than just as a consumer of the Information Society, then innovation and development like this must continue to be encouraged and the best technologies must be adopted and brought to market. If we simply wait for the future to happen, the danger is that we will be consigned to history. We have to work for the future and we have to invest in it. Embracing and helping to move the Information Society forward can enhance our national competitiveness in markets that are certain to constitute a significant slice of world GDP in the near future. The key question is: what must we do to make sure that it happens and that we make the most of it? First, there is the issue of universal provision. We can all agree that we must not create an information society of “haves” and “have nots”—the goal is a global village not a global middle-class suburb. But how can we square this with the claim that the Information Society will be built with private capital? At least a part of the answer is that we have to distinguish between the aim of universal availability and a universal service obligation. The former is ultimately the responsibility of Government and the latter is traditionally imposed on telephone companies. It is often achieved through the market, but only applied when sufficient numbers of people are shown to be in danger of being disadvantaged. But, however we get there, universal service will require significant financing and care needs to be taken to ensure that it is really beneficial for all. There is also an onus on commercial organisations to show how we can work together to bring the social and economic benefits of the Information Society closer. Many of us will, of course, be taking part in the DTI’s Information Society Initiative which aims to persuade small and medium enterprises of the benefits the new technology offers. More generally, there are other encouraging signs of competitors co-operating where they have mutual interests: the Network Interconnection Consultative Committee and the Digital Audio Visual Council would be good examples. Government also has a role to play in creating an environment which accelerates the development of the information society, providing incentives for innovation and the early adoption of applications and also in encouraging risk taking. I believe that there are some very specific, practical, actions Government could—and indeed should—take. One, is to promote the information society at all levels. Next month’s G7 conference in South Africa is an opportunity for an early win/Two, is to stimulate the market by funding long-term, pre-competitive research and development. The final implementation of particular technologies should, I would suggest, be left to commercial decision-making by the market. Three, is to encourage private sector investment. Four, is to provide support services such as training, expertise and administration for the users and implementers of the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32218631_0068.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
