Two months into its term, the new UK coalition government is making noises about moving into the social-networking age, using crowdsourcing for getting rid of unwanted legislation and promising to put details of government expenditure online.
But this government faces two basic ICT (information and communication technologies) issues that could make or break their entire program, and both depend entirely on the Internet.
Firstly, can the government overcome its own internal ICT challenges, which are formidable, while reducing expenditure, losing headcount, migrating technologies, and reversing under-investment in infrastructure? It’s a task not unlike changing all four wheels on a car while it’s still moving.
While there is a limited penetration of the market by cable service companies, the bulk of Internet connection in the UK is through landlines managed by the de-nationalized telco BT (previously British Telecom). The problem is that much of the existing network is good old-fashioned copper.