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.”