Question: Why do we need an e-Envoy?

Andrew Pinder: I think we need an e-Envoy to provide a real focal point for a whole pile of activities happening, not just in government but also outside government. The point really is an energy source, a focal point, someone with a sense of vision, pulling on other people's vision, and helping drive the whole agenda forward. The problem is this is a very wide area, there is both the public sector and the private sector involved in trying to make all this happen. And so having someone who can help pull things together and make connections between people I think is very useful.

Question: So what will be your key priorities?

Andrew Pinder: Probably three key priorities. First of all in government, hitting the 2005 target, not just hitting it but hitting it well. So that we provide services which are both attractive to use and easy to use. Outside government, get the infrastructure for the country right and the environment right so that we have a vibrant economy, lots of small firms starting up and doing well, big firms doing well, and taking full advantage of the new technology we have, and having the infrastructure to do it on. And on top of that, an educated population who have got the basic skills to use this technology if they want to and the confidence to do so and also the ability to have access.

Question: Looking at one of those things, business. What do you think are the big 'e' challenges facing UK businesses?

Andrew Pinder: The challenge is providing alternative services to the existing channels so that people have got a choice of channels to do business down, and making those channels attractive to people, so that people actually want to use them. Often if you are a big established business you have also got the additional problem of making that channel fit to your established computer systems and ways of doing business. And that is why one or two businesses have gone down a different route, rather than just go down a channel that is part of their mainstream business, they have set up a different channel. Prudential with Egg is a classic example of that.

Question: How do UK companies rate with their international competitors and new clients on the internet?

Andrew Pinder: Many of them pretty good, some of them are world beating.

Question: Are there problems in certain industry sectors which need to catch up perhaps?

Andrew Pinder: Not that I am aware of. I think that within sectors there may well be differences between firms. There is a very high awareness amongst management and that has been heightened all the time. The IoD are doing a good job for example in raising awareness, as indeed are the CBI. So I think there is awareness at the top level and people are trying very hard to take advantage of this new way of doing things.

Question: There is lots of talk about the internet bubble having burst, and a number of internet companies, specific internet companies crashed. How concerned are you by this?

Andrew Pinder: I am only concerned by the hype around, and the fact that the hype makes people feel that this internet bubble has burst. I don't think it has burst. What has happened is there is some technology that has been grossly overvalued and they are now coming down to more reasonable values. That is the first thing that has happened. The second thing is there has been an enormous creative wave taking place over the last few years, and some of those just haven't worked out, and particularly the ones that haven't worked out are those that are just purely on the internet, rather than on multiple channels. So there have been some spectacular crashes and they have made some good stories in the press. But actually internet usage has gone up enormously, and the internet is becoming a way of life for people, so I don't think the bubble has burst, nor do I think there are significant problems. I am just worried about people thinking that there are problems and part of my job is to try to reassure them that there aren't.

Question: What is your message to UK businesses that are cynical about the benefits of the internet?

Andrew Pinder: Wake up.

Question: So what's at stake if they don't wake up?

Andrew Pinder: I think it depends upon the industry, but clearly they are going to be left behind by their competitors if they are in a retail business, then the internet is an essential channel of delivering services to their customers. If they are not in a retail business, the internet is a useful tool to use for purchasing products for their business and for doing business to business work. They just have to be aware of it as they are of any other channel of selling or doing business.

Question: How concerned are you that small businesses may miss the boat due to investment, training problems, whatever?

Andrew Pinder: Small businesses are getting on to the internet faster than our target suggested so we have 1.7 million companies now on-line, compared to our target of a million by next year. So there is a very rapid growth in the use of the internet amongst small businesses. There is obviously a skills problem generally in the country as indeed there is in the world. This is a rapidly growing business and we need to get people skilled up so that they can take advantage of this new technology.

Question: At present how much does the e-commerce market amount to in the UK, financially?

Andrew Pinder: It's growing very rapidly.

Question: But do you foresee it continuing to grow for the next five years say?

Andrew Pinder: Yes, I think it depends on what you define as the e-commerce market. A lot of companies just do transactions electronically now anyway as part of their normal way of business, why differentiate it.

Question: Looking at the development of e-government, government services on-line. What government services should we expect to see going on line in 2001, over the next twelve months?

Andrew Pinder: We have already got tax returns on line. That has had a very shaky start. I think the next round of tax returns will be a more attractive product and will be easier to use, as the Inland Revenue have been working very hard on that. You'll see value added tax returns going on line. A number of DTI services to companies going on line. You'll see the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food services going on line, common agricultural policies returns for example, so quite a range of services will be coming available.

Question: Last year the public accounts committee argued that government web sites varied significantly with some looking disconnected and relatively hard to navigate. Fair criticism?

Andrew Pinder: Yes. What we are doing about it is providing some central guidance and also building up a team here who can really work to provide standards for government web sites, things like security for example as well as branding type issues and attractiveness issues. We want to work with Trust UK making sure that government web sites meet e-commerce standards of trust in the way they deal with the public. So yes there is a lot to be done on the government web sites and we are doing it. We have recruited a large number of people. There was an advertisement last week in one of the national newspapers for a group of people to come in, we have had well over 900 responses to that and we are hoping to get a core of e-communicators who can work with them. Last week we had an e-communicators conference drawing webmasters from government departments together and the local authorities, and we are working with them again to improve public sector websites.

Question: The target for 2005 is to get all government services on line. How confident are you of achieving this and what are the major obstacles in your way?

Andrew Pinder: I am pretty confident of achieving it. Major obstacles in the way are back office systems in some of the bigger departments where it just takes a long time to change them, at a time when they are trying very hard to provide a current service. Another obstacle is not so much hitting the 2005 target but hitting it in a way which makes these services attractive to use. So it is not just about putting existing forms on line or existing brochures on line, it is much more about finding more creative ways in which those services can be offered. So that you want to use them rather than an existing paper service.

Question: How much will it cost, this exercise of getting government services on line by 2005?

Andrew Pinder: The price tag we have put on it so far is a billion pounds. And we have got a central budget which we hold jointly with the treasury which is allocated to departments to work on this. In the longer term hopefully they will save money, in the short term this will cost money and we take that into account. That is what the billion pounds is about.

Question: MPs have been criticised in the past for not embracing the internet. Critics argue that not enough of them have web sites and they are not doing enough to communicate with their constituents via the internet. What is your message to MPs?

Andrew Pinder: I think my message to MPs is to every other member of the population who is trying to communicate with the public, is this is a very valuable means of communicating and they should try and take advantage of it if they can. There are some books that one can use, there are some lessons that one can learn, there are plenty of attractive MPs websites around, plenty of other sites around that are attractive from which they can draw some lessons. Please use it guys, it will be useful in getting your message across.

Question: What will you do to bridge the digital divide, what can you do?

Andrew Pinder: I think the digital divide is composed of a number of things. First of all there are people who feel they haven't got the skills to access the internet and we can do something about giving them opportunities to pick up the skills, so there are courses that one can go to, that is the first thing. The second thing is to provide people with some more confidence to use the internet. Let them experiment a little bit. The Prime Minister announced the opening of some UK on-line centres, and they will be open later this year, where people will have help in using the internet, hopefully that will give them confidence. The third issue around the digital divide is simply the physical problem of access. You need to have somewhere to go to. Again libraries and schools are increasingly going on-line and there are some targets around that. But there are also issues around a geographic divide.

The vast access for the internet is becoming concentrated in urban areas and that in itself is proving hard enough. We are concerned about rural areas, where rural communities have been having a rough time over the last few years. And we don't want them to be left out of all this. So we are looking at what might be done to help make sure the infrastructure is out there in rural areas as well as in urban areas.

Question: What could you do for the rural areas?

Andrew Pinder: I think there are things we could do around, for example aggregating public procurement of broadband access in order to persuade suppliers that there really is a need out in some of these rural areas and so we actually get the backbone out there, I am sure that is a fundamental thing we need to do.

Question: What will you be doing to drive down the internet access cost for consumers, or is there anything you could do about that?

Andrew Pinder: The long term way of driving down those costs is a competitive market and therefore it is all about trying to open up competition, so that there are choices of suppliers. That has worked quite a lot. Our internet costs are in some respects the best in the world. Our off peak access is almost the cheapest in the world. Our peak time access is about the third or fourth cheapest in Europe, there are other countries that are cheaper. It varies all the time but the competitive market actually drives down costs.

Question: People's image of the internet is a computer and desk top, do you think in five years, ten years time that is going to change in that your internet access will be all wrapped up into your TV and radio access?

Andrew Pinder: Why are you talking five or ten years time, it is far earlier than that. You already can have internet access across mobile phones, you already can have internet access across digital television so it is there already, five million people in this country have got digital TV's and many of them use it to have internet access and there are going to be a further two million digital TV's at least out there by the end of the year.

Question: And so you think that will be the main way of getting people confident enough to use it?

Andrew Pinder: I think for many people that will be an important way. Obviously most of us have access to the internet, and will continue to have access to the internet at work, and that is expanding very rapidly. A lot of people have PC's at home, but there are more digital TV's at home than there are PC's in the home, and that is going to be pretty important.

Question: Finally, do you anticipate any need for any fresh e-commerce legislation over the next year or two?

Andrew Pinder: I don't think there is a need at the moment that we can foresee. There are a number of things we need to do to implement existing legislation. There is the Electronic Communications Act, which gives government the power to make some orders that make electronic signatures valid in different transactions and those orders started coming out in the last few months, there are going to be more of those as we gradually bring transactions on line. For example it will very shortly be legal to do conveyancing electronically. There are a series of orders, probably a thousand or so orders that will be needed in order to get everything enabled electronically.

Question: People say security is a big problem, do you anticipate security in terms of the internet, that you are passing over your credit card number or whatever?

Andrew Pinder: I think that the security is an issue whenever you are doing a transaction involving a credit card. Whether it is in a shop or over the telephone or across the internet. The important thing is that you are first of all carrying out the transaction with someone you trust and that is what the Trust UK scheme is all about. For very big transactions there are stronger methods of authentication and we are encouraging the use of digital certificates a lot. For example the Government Gateway which has just gone live, is one of the first pieces of infrastructure that will actually accept digital certificates. This will be used initially to do transactions such as submitting value added tax (VAT) returns and common agricultural policy returns (CAP) for farmers The Gateway is the back office system allowing transaction between Government and citizen and enable interactive services to available on line in compliance with the 2005 target.