Verista: Ecommerce's Monthly Talking Point

Ecommerce's Monthly Talking Point: September 1999

Priming The Pump
Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair has bought his wife Cherie a bunch of flowers, using the web. Or maybe somebody did it for him, because he’s also said that he’s going to enrol on a basic computer skills course. In any case, the UK has now had an official wake-up call, with the appointment of an ‘e-envoy’ and a target to make Britain the best place to do ecommerce by 2002.
Given the government’s passion for appointing issue-led champions (or ‘fall guys’ as they’re called in the US), I suppose we should be glad that Alex Allen has been named as an ‘e-envoy’ rather than a ‘spam tsar’.
But aside from the media ripple, what effect will Blair’s intervention have?
Firstly, while 2002 sounds like a long way away, it’s actually only nine quarters off. Given that British technologists dismally repeat that the UK is some two years behind the US in its use of the Internet, perhaps we can hope to have caught up with 1999 by the time Blair’s deadline rolls round. Those British players who haven’t already moved on ecommerce are going to need superhuman support if they’re to go from nothing to world-beater status in 27 months.
But what is the government offering? A stuttering form of e-encouragement, and the threat of bumping into Mr Blair at night school. No sign of any investment in infrastructure, and no sign that the ‘entrepreneur culture’ plans of former Trade Minister Peter Mandelson will ever see the light of day.
Secondly, where’s the logic in asserting that this nation should be the ‘best place’ to do ecommerce? Is that because ecommerce creates pools of jobs, or overspill wealth, or higher standards of living? There is no evidence that it does. It might make sense to attract ecommerce companies to the London stock market, but that doesn’t mean they need to base themselves in the UK.
The Internet is neutral to geography; but it is sensitive to regulation. The government’s conversion to ecommerce is bound to raise suspicions that the politicians are interested in taxing online trade, or in taking a privileged security position through mandatory key escrow. Neither measure would make the nation that adopted it any kind of place to do ecommerce.