Using the TV set to implement E-governance
Starting May 2004, British citizens of Merseyside, South Yorkshire and Kent will be able to report streetlight failure through their (digital) television sets ! Culminating a long-term plan into reality.

While the rest of the world talked of E-governance via web-sites (the "dotcom boom") British policy makers shrewdly & quietly put their money on implementing digital television. With a consistent approach, UK today, is perhaps the only country which can predict a cut-off date for switching off analogue TV !

With over 60% of television sets logged on to digital television signals, the Government has funded projects which will offer simple, but useful services like :

• Abandoned Vehicle Reporting
• Streetlight Failure Reporting
• Waste Collection
• Tax Application Form
• Jobs Hotline

And ultimately evolve a self-sustaining, self-funded way to enable households to communicate and interact with their local council via a range of transactions, account queries, payments, information transactions, service requests and consultation.

Using the Television Habit. Along with the TV Bandwidth
Over the past few years, by focussing on & implementing digital television, the U.K. Govt. has built up a huge bandwidth pipeline to every TV set.

Once the critical mass (40%) of digital TV households was achieved, it was a matter of building the technology. This involved :
• Create software to manage the content, design, and publishing of micro sites - this was initiated by the Govt.
• Control, maintain & publish information on digital interactive TV platforms, by creating the micro websites for each local governing body - a combination of software, content management & hosting.

Interestingly, almost all development has been in conjunction with Local Authorities, whose vast experience has been put to good use while freezing the the concept, requirements and design of the software.

And while the technology and templates will be maintained centrally, all content, services and functionality will be created and managed locally via a web-based content management system on the Local Authority's micro site.

UK Online !
Quite fittingly, the citizen will be able to initially access his Local Authority micro-site through the UK Online portal, after navigating a map to locate the relevant micro-site. Subsequently, it will be automatic, based on collaboration with each DTV platform.

The U.K. Governance via Digital TV is being implemented on private satellite & cable platforms Sky, Telewest & NTL. While the publicly funded Freeview DTT platform has been excluded from this project - to be "included later".

Business via Digital TV
The U.K. Govt is currently testing the efficacy of connecting a set of citizens to one of its boroughs via digital TV - to see whether or not digital TV could become a useful or even preferred method of communication. The idea is not only to test feasibility & user-acceptance but also to ascertain to what extent this could mean savings in the service provision chain. Which, of course is one of the ultimate aims of e-Governance.

Nearly 80% of business in any country is generated by the Government, either directly or indirectly. So it is fitting that the lion's share of the benefits of digital TV be used for e-governance. However, once established, the household connected via digital TV will be as accesible to private corporations as it will be to local Government . And considering that most Govt services are likely to be outsourced, the digital TV revolution should affect every aspect of British life, positively.