Behind the Headlines: the e-envoy post-mortem

On this week's Behind the Headlines, silicon.com's studio guests evaluated a recent report from the Cabinet Office's Performance and Innovation Unit, which found that only 32 per cent of online government agencies offered the public an interactive, transactional service. The studio guests said it was imperative the government adopt a more focused approach to ecommerce as soon as possible.

According to Perri 6, senior research fellow at the University of Strathclyde, the government reduced the effectiveness of Alex Allan's role by burdening him with too many responsibilities.

He said: "The trouble was that the e-envoy was supposed to - in the same week - sort out government computing, promote ebusiness to the private sector and promote Britain abroad as a good place to do ebusiness. His accountability was split between the Cabinet Office and the DTI. He had very few resources and very few people working for him. The result was a job that wasn't do-able and wasn't designed to be do-able."

Perri 6 also dismissed new government proposals to introduce business incubator schemes to foster ecommerce initiatives within government departments.

"Incubator schemes are supposed to come up with new ideas that float off independently. That worries me. My concern is that we need to join together all the mainstream services of government and get those sorted out. Incubators undermine holistic government," he added.

Chris Setz, president of the Network Professionals Association, argued that the government should be take advantage of application service providers (ASPs) to deliver government services.

However, Phillip Carnelley, analyst at Ovum, stressed that outsourcing only served to further deplete the government of IT expertise.

He said: "The more you outsource, the less knowledge and expertise are left within government. Already the civil service is a bunch of educated, talented amateurs who float from department to department. They're not IT experts."

The panellists also discussed the importance of protecting online brand identities. You can see this week's programme in the Power Brokers Channel.