UK Government study: Moving into the Information Age 1999

European Telework Online

UK Government study: Moving into the Information Age 1999

"A very useful report - but handle with care!" is the reaction of the European Telework Online team to the latest edition of the UK Government's benchmarking programme.

Details of the study are in the European Telework Online resources database, including links to the online version of the reports (when they become available online). Commentary below is by the European Telework Online team. These extracts are a very small sample from a detailed and useful report.

See also our commentary on the 1998 report in this series.

ICT Connectivity Indicator

The UK Department of Trade and Industry, with their consultants Spectrum, have defined an "indicator of ICT connectivity", which is used in this report as a headline basis for country by country comparisons of progress. The basis for the indicator is activities by companies; it reports the proportion of companies that meet at least one of three criteria:

having a website
frequent use of external e-mail
frequent use of EDI

Using this metric, five countries show roughly comparable performance, with two countries trailing significantly:

USA	65%
Canada	65%
UK	63%
Japan	60%
Germany	59%
France	39%
Italy	34%

In our view, this presents an unduly optimistic view of progress in UK, Japan and Germany, because:

"Having a website" is not at all the same as "actively using the World Wide Web as a business tool". A high proportion of websites are either inactive or lightly used, showing little evidence of management commitment to understand and develop a significant "online presence".
By comparison, "frequent use of EDI" clearly implies a significant investment of time and effort, with at least some impact of other business processes and systems.
Internal evidence within the study confirms that there can be a big difference between the proportion of companies who "have a website" and the proportion that use their website actively.
Other internal evidence suggests that "frequent use of external e-mail" may also be a misleading metric.
The additive approach (counting all companies that meet at least one of these criteria) lends undue weight to the least reliable indicator: in the UK for example, 51% of companies are reported as "having a website", only 32% use EDI, with a smaller proportion having "frequent use of EDI".

Use of the Web

More signficance can be attached to the use of the web for particular purposes. The decision to "have a website" is a relatively minor one, especially for smaller companies. The decision to use it for online selling takes more management focus and commitment:

	% of companies that:
	have a website	use it for advertising and marketing	use it for online sales	use the Internet for purchasing
Canada	54	46	16	35
USA	54	40	12	33
UK	51	44	9	24
Japan	50	37	6	2
Germany	48	43	9	27
Italy	30	23	3	11
France	25	16	3	8

There are some interesting issues and questions underlying these data:

While the proportion in UK and Germany using the web for online sales is reported as rising from 5% to 9% between the 1998 and 1999 reports, the proportion in USA reported as declining from 13% to 12%. If true, this suggests that Germany and UK are en route to overtaking the USA in companies' propensity to "sell online", which seems out of line with other market reports and data.
Presumably the those companies that have a website but do not use it for advertising and marketing are still in experimentation or development mode. This is supported by the fact that the country with the lowest proportion of companies with sites (France) also has the largest gap.
Japan is the only country where the proportion "selling" is higher than the proportion "buying". This suggests that the selling is into the global market in English and other foreign languages, while buying is restricted by the relatively fewer Japanese language sites.
Even the apparently low proportion (9%) of companies that claim to be selling online in German and UK seems high on the basis of direct experience using the web. The number of business sites actually providing for direct online sales subjectively appears to be lower than 9% of "all companies".

A lot of value could be added to this study at a relatively low cost by introducing a more empirical element against which the statements by companies can be evaluated. For example, a random sample assessment of actual company websites in the countries concerned would validate (or not!) claims about the companies' use of their sites for online selling.

Use of e-mail

The study reports on the extent to which companies use email, for external and internal communications:

	% of companies using e-mail:
	Externally	Internally
Canada	80	65
Japan	74	66
USA	74	64
UK	72	61
Germany	70	52
France	45	35
Italy	44	32

The study comments on the facts that:

in all countries there are more companies using external e-mail than using internal e-mail
the gap between the number using internal and the number using external increased between the 1998 and 1999 reports
there is a significant difference in frequency of use, with internal mail showing a higher frequency of use

The study doesn't seek to draw any conclusions from this. A plausible view is that:

Accelerated use of external email is influenced by the increased incidence of "having a website";
In companies that have a website but don't use internal email, the use of external email may well be restricted to a relative few individuals who are involved directly with the website
Use of external email but without internal email strongly suggests that the technology is seen as a minor "add on" to the business rather than as something more deeply influencing the business process.

Internet access, remote access and telework

The study's data on remote access and Internet access provide interesting comparisons. "Remote access" means that an employee can access the company's business applications and data when away from the office (when travelling, working at home or from customer premises).

	Internet access (%)		Remote access (%)
	Some access	Access from all desk tops	Available	Some employees work from home at least one day per month, using remote access
Japan	78	20	37	79
Canada	75	28	50	80
USA	68	36	46	74
Germany	65	15	34	73
UK	62	16	42	66
Italy	36	5	13	75
France	34	5	20	59

Note the disparity between "some access" to the Internet (which may mean access for email only) and "access from all desktops", which implies a management view that the Internet is a general purpose business tool for all or most staff:

Companies in Japan rank highest for "some access", but relatively low for "access from all desktops".
Although the spread of difference for "some access" between Japan, Canada, USA, Germany and UK is relatively small, the spread for "all desktops" is much wider, with companies in the USA more than twice as likely as those in Germany or UK to offer pervasive access.

A striking feature of the data on remote access is the extent to which, if it is made available, employees appear ready to use it. This is one of the few metrics where both the availability of the technology and its take up are quite comparable across most of the countries. This question was only asked in the study if the respondent had already indicated that remote access is available. We will try to obtain the underlying data, from which it may be possible to draw conclusions about the prevalence of teleworking.

Source: Moving into the Information Age 1999, UK Department of Trade and Industry, May 1999
For details see European Telework Online resources database.

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ETD is supported by the European Commission (DGXIII) as part of the Advanced Communications Technologies and Services (ACTS) programme. ETD's central web pages are hosted at the European Telework Online website.

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This page last updated 8th June 1999
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