http://www.isi.gov.uk/isi/bench/

In the UK, copies of the printed report can be obtained via the Information Society Initiative information line, telephone 0345 15 2000.

More detailed market data on all EU countries plus informed analysis and commentary on the Information and Communications Technologies markets world wide are in the EITO 1998 Report (European IT Observatory), supported by the European Commission and European Telework Development and available through European Telework Online.

". . . the UK has maintained its global position compared to the countries benchmarked . . ."

Notwithstanding the above strictures this is a very useful report. It would be even more useful if Governments in the European Union agreed to pool resources to produce an annual report with a much larger sample size!

About the Study

1. Where the year on year change is a large one (say more than 10 percentage points), the trend shown is very likely to be valid;

2. Where the change is only a few percentage points (say less than 5), disregard the trend, focus on the absolute numbers reported;

3. Be particularly cautious when the item relates to a sub-set of the sample, for example in reporting on small firms;

4. Focus on the overall comparisons between countries rather than particular items, except where the differences within a country for particular items is very marked.

Below are some comments on aspects we regard as of particular interest and significance.

Japan accelerates into the Networked Economy; France lags

France, in contrast, is significantly behind the other countries studied, especially in Internet aspects. This is in part due to the extensive use of Minitel in France, which means French people and managers actually have more experience of information networking than is suggested by their Internet usage. The report also mentions the relative lack of French language sites and information on the Internet, but this is something of a Catch 22 - if few French companies are online of course there will be little French content; Japan appears not to be allowing this impediment to impede progress, perhaps because Japanese has never been regarded as a global language, and the Japanese have for some decades been prepared to work and trade in English in their external activities. In its summary of countries, the report doesn't however mention recent Information Society policy developments in France which we can expect to lead to acceleration in Internet use as they feed through to businesses and citizens.

The selected data shown below illustrate the differences and some of the similarities among the countries:

• Companies using portable computers:
  Japan 75%
  UK 65%
  USA 57%
  Germany 56%
  France 43%
  

• Companies using nation-wide computer networking:
  Japan 66%
  UK 46%
  USA 37%
  Germany 29%
  France 29%
  

• Companies providing Internet access for employees:
  Japan 73%
  USA 57%
  UK 49%
  Germany 44%
  France 24%
  

• Companies having an Internet presence (website):
  Japan 45% (up from 28%)
  USA 41%
  UK 37%
  Germany 30%
  France 14% (up from 9%)
  

• Companies providing employees with remote access to company information systems:
  USA 43%
  UK 38%
  Japan 37%
  Germany 31%
  France 19%
  

Most companies not yet committed to Electronic Commerce

Even in the USA only a relatively small proportion of companies that have a website are using it actively for online sales, as opposed to the more passive reasons advanced - advertising and information distribution. This is to do with whether businesses believe the market opportunity has reached critical mass, as reflected in the proportion of the population online. The study quotes statistics from NUA for the percentages of population having Internet access:

Percentage of population with Internet access:

USA 21%
UK 10%
Japan 6%
Germany 5%
France 1%

but this fails to take into account population size. If we convert this to actual numbers of potential Internet customers in a company's home market, a very different picture emerges:

Number of citizens with Internet access (millions):

USA 56.7
Japan 7.5
UK 5.8
Germany 4.1
France 0.6

Clearly the motivation for a company to try selling to its customers on the Internet is dramatically less in any other country than in the USA, except for those companies that have the capability and courage to take the big step from selling at home to selling globally. In principle the single European market and especially the Euro common currency should enlarge the "home market" for European companies; but a company in France will still need to sell in Italian to Italians, in German to Germans etc. And even if Europe were indeed a single market from a buying behaviour as well as a trade regulation standpoint, the total number of connected consumers is still only half that in the USA.

This aspect of electronic commerce and Internet use generally is one that is hidden rather than revealed by percentages, and is one that so far as we can tell no European government has started to understand and address.