The evolution will be televised

New Media Awards 2001 - Digital TV offers big opportunities for e-democracy; the trouble is that Sky is the most important gatekeeper. By Mike Bracken

It makes sense for e-government services to work on TV. After all, not all households have access to a PC. Getting government services on the net has been a long and painful process, but the real challenge lies in creating services that are even more accessible to the public.

In this year's New Statesman New Media Awards, it was reassuring to see a seemingly polarised group of judges - Michael Fabricant and David Shayler among them - effortlessly come to the same conclusions about what constitutes a good site or service. So, if we can agree, why aren't all organisations, the government in particular, putting these theories into practice?

The good news is that, in some cases, the first signs of development are definitely there. It was particularly interesting this year to see www.tameside.gov.uk, a regional council service allowing residents to pay their council taxes and parking fines online, present itself on a television through a games console. The real opportunities, however, lie with digital TV: satellite, cable and terrestrial.

This year's overall merit winner is www.faxyourmp.com, a site that allows constituents to fax their MPs from a PC or a web-enabled TV. "We took into account some of the issues of TV design," explains the site's founder, Tom Loosemore. "Users hate scrolling and like the text to be big so they can read it from the sofa. A major interactive TV platform agreed to carry the service and expressed satisfaction at its speed and clarity."

However, the government has stated that, if it is to publish e-services on digital TV, it will have to do it over all three mediums.But in doing this, the government faces problems.

Cable's only real problem is that it is still very disjointed in this country. Terrestrial, too, faces an uncertain future.

The real difficulty lies with Sky, which holds the monopoly over satellite television. Sky, as gatekeeper to the service, has adopted technologies that mean it can charge whatever it likes for entry to its platform. It claims that its platform is special - doubtless for good profit motives - but this is simply not the case. In truth, what you would see on the television is quite simply a website with fewer images. But if the government wants to increase accessibility to its services, it will have to bite the bullet and pay. At the moment, this seems unlikely.

So the government faces a gap between its ambitions and a rapidly consolidating market of digital TV platform owners who need to make money. While we wait patiently for the revolution to happen, what we are more likely to see in the coming year are more enlightened councils such as Tameside creating services that work on PC and TV.

In the midst of this debate, however, it becomes clear that even e-government services currently available on PC are not up to scratch. David Elstein, the former head of Channel 5, believes that the government "has a huge amount of work online before it gets to TV. The e-envoy needs to attack this issue before launching something nebulous on satellite. Tens of millions of pounds are being frittered away on partial and unconvincing projects." It will no doubt be a long time yet before convincing projects arrive on a screen near you.