Britain has made great strides in recent years in becoming a fully fledged information society. All Government services must be capable of being delivered online by 2005, and there are Information Age Champions in every Government Department to co-ordinate these activities. They report to the e-Envoy, the Government’s information society supremo, who is charged with delivering e-government throughout the whole country.

Special online services are developing to support lifelong learning, provide health advice and information, and give citizens access to official documents free of copyright restrictions. Access to Government and other quality services will be channelled through a single portal, called UK Online. There, under the Modernising Government agenda, information will be arranged in ways that citizens want to receive it, not in ways that suit civil service bureaucracy.

Interactive digital television, with full Internet access, should be available in all UK homes by about 2006. A network of 4,000 learning centres, completed by 2002, will help citizens become familiar with both digital technology and the services it is capable of delivering. Memory institutions - including libraries, archives and museums - will have a vital role to play, not merely in providing access but also in convincing many people that these services are directly relevant to their daily lives. But they will not be the only access points; post offices too may become public Internet access points, offering advice and guidance as well as kiosk facilities.

Most of these developments have happened in the lifetime of one Government, elected on 1 May 1997. As we approach the next General Election, now is a good time to take stock of what has been achieved over the last four years, and what still remains to be done.

In 1998, the Government published a policy document called Our Information Age [1]. This set out its vision of how Government would act to enable people to take advantage of the information age. In its foreword, the Prime Minister Tony Blair called for ”a co-ordinated strategy which will focus on widening access, promoting competition and competitiveness, fostering quality and modernising government”.

It set the agenda for all the developments which were to follow, spawning a succession of more detailed policy documents from other Government departments - Our Competitive Future from the Department of Trade & Industry [2], Open for Learning, Open for Business from the Department for Education & Employment [3], and two reports from the Cabinet Office,

e-commerce@its.best.uk [4] and e-government: a Strategic Framework for Public Services in the Information Age [5]. However the document that established the basic principles for how Government would develop in the Information Age was the Cabinet Office report Modernising Government [6]. Published in March 1999, it made a number of pledges about how Government would reform the way in which its services were delivered to the public. These included:

• Public services to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week where there is a demand;
• All dealings with Government to be deliverable electronically by 2008 (this has since been revised to 2005);
• Making sure that public service users, not providers, are the focus, by matching services more closely to people’s lives.

Above all, it promised Information Age Government, which would proactively exploit new technology to meet the needs of citizens and business, and not trail behind technological developments. It pledged to develop an information technology strategy for Government that would establish cross-government co-ordination and benchmark progress against targets for electronic services.

So did this mean that Britain now had a National Information Policy? The Library & Information Commission thought not. Established in 1995, the LIC was a Government body charged with advising all government departments and agencies on library and information matters. Very early on in its life, it had recognised the need for a National Information Policy. Back in 1997, it had published Towards a National Information Policy for the UK [7]. This acknowledged that nothing could happen without the use of technology, but the LIC’s policies were based on more than this. To achieve a fully functioning information society and knowledge economy, the LIC said, three issues had to be addressed:

• Connectivity : providing universal access to the products of the human mind;

• Content : creating a digital library of the UK's intellectual heritage of culture and innovation;

• Competence : equipping individuals and organisations to play their full role in a learning and information society.

Towards a National Information Policy for the UK eventually received favourable comment from the Cabinet Office, and it is clear that many of its messages were accepted. Meanwhile, however, large scale networked services were already developing, and the Cabinet Office had to move quickly to try to ensure that too much parallel development did not compromise the co-ordination for which Our Information Age had called.

First in the field was open.gov.uk. Established in 1994, it provided links to many of the existing government and other public authority web sites, as well as to press releases and news. It was a good start, but it was structured entirely round public institutions, not according to the episodes that people face in real life - birth, marriage, establishing a business, seeking social security, divorce, death. It also highlighted just how variable the existing public web sites were, in both quality and quantity of information supplied, as well as in navigation and functionality. It is due to be phased out soon and replaced by the new Government portal, UK Online [8].

All through the later 1990s, other networks were being planned and starting to develop. The National Grid for Learning (NGfL) [9] provides online materials to support children in school working their way through the National Curriculum. UfI/learndirect [10] gives access to vocational and other learning opportunities outside the compulsory education system. NHS Direct [11] offers health advice via call centres and the Web. The Distributed National Electronic Resource [12] will give access to content designed for use in higher education. Recently announced is a further service called Culture Online [13], which will allow learners, whether adults or children, to access online cultural treasures and the know-how of cultural organisations.

Meanwhile the LIC had been given responsibility for the People’s Network [14], a project to provide material to support lifelong learning and education in the broadest sense, through the public library service. Significantly, and rather unlike the other big public networking developments, the People’s Network is more than just a conduit for delivery of online materials. With the initial investment funded through our National Lottery, the project has three strands:

• Networking all 4,000-plus public library service points to each other, to the Internet and to the National Grid for Learning;
• Content to support self-directed lifelong learning, complementary to the services provided by the NGfL and UfI/learndirect;
• Training for all public library front line staff, to enable them to use information & communication technology effectively and to help the public get the best out of the services available.

Thus all the public libraries would become not only Internet access points, but also places where you could get expert help in using it - and of course in using other, more conventional information sources as well. In addition, UfI/learndirect is supporting some 700 centres where people can get help with using the Web, and the Treasury is funding some 1,000 more under its Capital Modernisation Fund. With such a wide range of networks, websites and mediated access points, there’s plenty of opportunity for the public to get confused about what is available where and from whom.

The Government has recognised that it must take a firm hand over targets, quality and standards for information age government. So each department has an Information Age Champion [15], a senior official whose job is to ensure that the whole Government machine continues to move towards the goals set out in Modernising Government. Their activities are co-ordinated by the e-Envoy [16], who is based in the Cabinet Office and is responsible for setting targets - for example, all Government services to be capable of electronic delivery by 2005, switch-over to digital television by perhaps 2006.

He is also establishing the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF), a set of technical standards to ensure that all Government and public sector electronic services will work together [17]. These standards are mandatory for all new government and public sector electronic information systems, for any legacy systems that wish to link to the new systems, and for any private services that wish to link to public sector ones. Standards laid down so far include:

• Internet and World Wide Web standards for all government systems;
• XML as the main standard for data integration;
• a Metadata Framework to provide definitions for public sector information.

In addition, the Office of the e-Envoy is establishing a Government portal - UK Online - to present government as an integrated organisation and allow the citizen to deal with government on a one-to-one basis [8]. UK Online is organised not according to government departments and agencies, but by Life Episodes. Episodes already developed include:

• Going away
• Dealing with crime
• Having a baby
• Moving home
• Learning to drive
• Death and bereavement

Arranging public information in this way makes it instantly more comprehensible to citizens, and enables information on a wide range of related topics that people might not think of for themselves to be brought together in one place. The Moving Home episode, for example, also includes advice on registering with a doctor and other health services, on planning and managing repairs, on finding out about local transport facilities and on calculating your local council tax for the area you intend to move to.

In the cultural sphere, the Department for Culture, Media & Sport recognised several years ago that the museum and library services for which it was responsible had far more interests in common than separating them. They both supported lifelong learning, were important contributors to local community and economic development, and were in a position to reach out to excluded groups. So the government determined to wind up its two separate advisory bodies on museums and libraries - the Museums & Galleries Commission and the Library & Information Commission - and to create instead a brand new body to exploit these common factors.

Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives & Libraries [18] came into being in April 2000. Its vision is of museums, archives and libraries belonging ”at the very heart of people’s lives, contributing to their enjoyment and inspiration, cultural values, learning potential, economic prosperity and social equity”

. Now just a year old, it is developing policies that address not the individual needs and contributions of the separate domains, but issues that are large enough to encompass all three services.

The UK is currently creating a strong regional administrative structure; if museums, archives and libraries are to make their collective voice heard within it, then they need parallel, unified regional bodies, and these are being developed now. One of the most fundamental things that joins the three services together is their ability to support learning, so Resource will also developing a learning standard to ensure that all three work together, providing seamless services of the kind envisaged in Empowering the Learning Community [19]. Above all, the power of information & communication technology can enable the services to work together as never before, so there will also be an ICT strategy, extending the People’s Network from public libraries to museums and archives as well.

Many other helpful things have been happening too, all contributing to improved access to information for citizens, communities and businesses. Crown Copyright has been waived on a very wide range of Government documents, allowing people to copy, download and republish much official material with virtually no restrictions [20]. An Information Asset Register is developing, to tell people what unpublished datasets Government departments and agencies holds, to which citizens may require access or which may be suitable for publication [21]. And as we have already heard from Barbara, the Government has just agreed to start looking at ways of improving links between education and public libraries, so that self-directed lifelong learners can have their needs satisfied wherever is appropriate, irrespective of who funds the institution concerned [22].

Government is also recognising that direct online access to information is not a panacea, and that many people will continue to need help and support with their information gathering, even when digital TV can potentially deliver all services into all homes. It’s looking not simply to libraries to provide this support, but also to other ubiquitous service outlets, such as post offices. In a recent report called Counter Revolution: modernising the post office network [23], the Cabinet Office Performance & Innovation Unit suggested that post offices could become one-stop shops for Government information and transactions as well as for Internet learning and access. This idea has been endorsed by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, which is responsible for public library services in England; in its new report Culture and Creativity: the next ten years [24], it has also suggested that mini-libraries could be established in post offices, alongside the proposed online services.

All this is welcome evidence of continued joining up, contributing to the ”co-ordinated strategy” for which the Prime Minister called in 1998. But much still remains to be done. Here are just a few of the challenges we face:

• The Department that oversees the public library service doesn’t fund it;
• The Government’s advisory body on museums, archives & libraries doesn’t oversee national museums;
• Money cannot easily pass between public and educational libraries;
• The co-ordinator of Government services has many information initiatives to keep track of.

We will be facing a General Election in the UK soon. If the current Labour government wins a second term, then it’s probably fair to say that the Cabinet Office will be able to wield even more power over the quality and co-ordination of public information. Up to now it has been flexing its muscles, preparing the ground for a co-ordinated National Information Policy. To refer back to the title of my paper, it has already stockpiled many of the bricks needed for this edifice, and must now start cementing them together.

We began with the three Cs developed by the old Library & Information Commission - connectivity, content, competence. Just a few days before it ceased its separate existence, the LIC held a large conference at the British Library in London, to assess how much progress had been made on the National Information Policy for the UK, and what remained to be done. The LIC also took the opportunity to update its own views on the subject, in its last ever policy document, Keystone for the Information Age [25]. One thing that emerged from the conference was that, although issues of connectivity and content were being addressed effectively, through the development of big national networks and the creation of managed content to populate them, the issue of competence - people’s ability to take advantage of all the information sources opening up to them - was being left behind.

Some progress is certainly being made. Current and forthcoming revisions to the National Curriculum for schools in England will lay much greater emphasis, across all subjects, on students’ ability to find the information they need and assess its quality. Although the initial purpose of the network of ICT Learning Centres will be to teach people how to use the technology, Britain’s Secretary of State for Education has gone on record as saying that they will also be a means of attracting people who may currently lack basic literacy and numeracy skills. Nevertheless, there is still a danger that too much emphasis will be laid on people’s use of the technology, and not enough on their ability to use it as a tool to find and evaluate the information they need.

That’s why Resource and the UK Library Association have got together to form a policy action group on National Information Policy. Taking forward the LIC’s ideas, this group will shortly be advising on what still needs to be done to turn the policy from a pile of bricks into a solidly constructed building. At the risk of mixing metaphors, the Group will be saying that the future is a Doughnut. Doughnuts have dough, sugar and jam, and the policy action group currently sees the UK’s National Information Policy in the same light.

The dough consists of those areas where much has already happened, but where it is important to ensure that the voice and contribution of library & information service providers is recognised and paid attention to. It includes issues such as freedom of information and copyright, metadata and interoperability, universal access, legal deposit, heritage and legacy, e-government - all areas where the library & information community should expect its voice to be heard. There are other areas where the profession might have a view but is less likely to be listened to. These include authentication, encryption and e-business. We will keep an eye on all these and comment when necessary, but they will not be our main concern.

The sugar consists of the wider society issues on which National Information Policy will have an impact - the knowledge economy and learning society, globalisation and competitiveness, lifestyle changes and quality of life, the Human Rights Act. We won’t be trying to break new ground here, but we will be making connections between these big developments and people’s access to information.

The jam is at the heart both of the doughnut and of what we wish to achieve. The jam consists of the areas of greatest need, the principal one being information competencies. We’ll be looking at people’s personal skills, at whether the right specialists are to be found in the workforce, and at whether organisations are developing the expertise they need in order to thrive in the information society and knowledge economy. We’ll be putting our greatest effort into issues such as these, and we’ll be commissioning some desk research in order to learn about best practice overseas before making our recommendations.

That’s why an opportunity such as this - meeting information professionals from another country that is travelling down the same road - is so important for me. The Czech Republic has a reputation for producing well trained and formidably competent workers. It is also, I suspect, further down the road than the UK in freedom of information. We need to learn how countries such as yours are integrating information handling and ”learning to learn” skills into your formal education and training systems, and into the self-directed learning that individuals engage in - whether for career development purposes or merely to satisfy personal curiosity. In return, we offer a warts-and-all view of the progress we are making, and hope that you may benefit from learning about some of the things we are doing.

Our approaches may be different, but our goals, I am sure, will be the same. What I would like to take away from this conference is lots of ideas on:

• how to mainstream libraries in Government thinking...
• how to demonstrate their value to policy makers, and hence release resources...
• and how to achieve a co-ordinated information society and knowledge economy in which libraries, museums and archives play their full part.

Tim Owen is the central government policy adviser at Resource, a government-funded body which advises on museum, archive and library matters. Previously he was head of policy & communications at the Library & Information Commission, whose functions were absorbed by Resource in April 2000. With nearly 30 years’ professional library and information experience before that, he is also active as a journalist, trainer and consultant, and is the author of Success at the Enquiry Desk: successful enquiry answering every time (London: Library Association Publishing, 3^rd ed 2000).