Digital Britain
The final version of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain will be published on Tuesday. You would be forgiven for not knowing this.
Despite the Government’s talk of “engaging” “stakeholders”, the number of people who work in Internet-related businesses in the UK who know what the draft report says—let alone what the final version is likely to say—is tiny. Far from “Digital Britain” heralding a brave new world where the Government and technologists are no longer at loggerheads, and instead are supporting one another in the recognition that each is reliant upon the other, this is yet another report written by yet another collection of civil servants, with yet another peer’s name on the front cover.
Yes, it’s true that a website was created. Not that it ranks remotely highly for the search terms you might expect to use in order to find it (which in today’s world means it might as well not exist). It also contains paragraphs like the following (from the latest post on the site—dated the 12th July):
First of all, as well as the ubiquitous PDF, we will be publishing the report online in a commentable form, using WordPress and the Commentariat theme developed by the Engagement Team at the department formally known as DIUS. This will go up towards the end of next week.
Honestly, if that’s the best they can do in terms of announcing that the report will be arriving soon—a report which is supposed to shape Britain’s official policy on a wide range of issues which affect the vast majority of the population—then it’s enough to make you weep into your keyboards.
Thankfully, it’s unlikely that the report will form the basis of policy in any meaningful way—instead, the meat of it all will require reaching out to stakeholders and conducting consultations, and so on. The downside with this is that further layers of committees and non-conversations will be created before anything’s actually decided. Once decisions have been taken, everybody will wonder how the conclusions were arrived at.
(Fans of Douglas Adams will recall the line “It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’” from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Government policy often appears to be “consulted” upon in a similar fashion).
Chapter-by-chapter, then, what the report will (or rather won’t) say:
- Introduction
- Waffle. Engagement; building a future for Britain; the digital economy; that sort of thing. Of course, none of the people who are actually part of the “digital economy” will have contributed much to this report.
- Next Generation Access Networks
- We need them. No mention of making realistic competitors to BT Openreach any more financially plausible, though. Strategy group to be established.
- Mobile Wireless Networks
- This is unlikely to mandate anything the mobile operators and Ofcom aren’t doing already.
- Television
- The digital switchover and related marketing. Nothing concrete about next-generation broadcast networks (e.g., utilising Internet infrastructure to compete with Virgin Media and Sky). Nothing about ensuring openness and neutrality as broadcast technologies evolve.
- Radio
- Don’t mention the fact that DAB has been a complete failure. Talk about it being the platform of choice for digital radio listening.
- The Economics of Digital Content
- Home taping is killing music. Commitment to examine the possibility of siphoning some funds into content creation.
- Investment in Content: Rights and Distribution
- File-sharing is the work of the devil. Unfortunately, we can neither prove this nor prevent it, but this will be neatly glossed over. Expect the words “explore”, “establish a framework” and “co-ordinated response”. Do not be surprised if proposals here tie in a little too neatly with the Home Office’s Interception Modernisation Programme.
- Investment in Content: Original UK Content
- Huge question-mark over this one, though in reality it’s unlikely to change the face of broadcasting. A total overhaul of the TV License funding arrangements won’t be found here. Handing some cash over to Channel 4 may well be part of it, though.
- Universal connectivity: Networks
- 2 megabit Universal Service Obligation will remain unchanged from the draft. No explanation of how this will be achieved, beyond deferring to major ISPs and telecoms companies (renowned, of course, for their altruism). The USO will specifically not mandate acceptable latency or contention—just line-speed.
- Driving Universal Connectivity: Take-up
- Waffle. Expensive waffle, but waffle all the same.
- Education and Skills
- There will be precisely nothing on forcing local authorities to join the rest of us in the 21st Century. Waffle about training programmes that no employer cares about.
- Media Literacy
- Defer to Ofcom.
- Online Safeguards
- Discussion of some utterly unrealistic ideas about content labelling. No discussion of the IWF’s failings. Nothing about mandated training for the Police on technical matters. Very little about educating parents and their responsibility for their children when using the Internet.
- Conclusion
- The digital economy is fantastically important to Britain.
