Tony Blair and s-Minister yesterday announced the launch of a
new government initiative called UK Online. Tony Blair said: “There
is no new economy. There is one economy, all of it being
transformed by information technology.” UK Online appears to be a
re-branding of the Information Society Initiative launched in
1996.
Tony Blair and Patricia Hewitt said that small businesses have
“smashed” the Government's target for getting on-line. 1.7 million
small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are now on-line,
according to figures from the DTI's forthcoming International
Benchmarking Study. This is an increase of 1.1 million over last
year and exceeds the Government's target of getting 1.5 million
businesses on-line by 2002 two years early. 81% of UK businesses
are now online compared with 63% last year. The study also revealed
that 27% of UK companies are trading on-line, of which 450,000 are
SMEs.
The Prime Minister and Patricia Hewitt also announced £15
million of funding for UK online for business. This is in addition
to the £10 million announced in this year's budget. The money will
be used for expanding UK online for business and providing a
further 100 advisers.
Tony Blair, commenting on what the government sees as recent
successes, said:
“Last September, we said we’d get unmetered
access to the internet. We’ve done better than that. On the OECD
comparisons, where last year we were average, today nowhere else in
the world has cheaper access off-peak. Not America, not Sweden, not
Germany, not anywhere.”
