UK e-envoy promises action on ecommerce

The UK's newly appointed e-envoy, Alex Allan, will play a crucial role spreading the government's ecommerce message across the country.

Allan is promising to travel nationwide, visiting boardrooms to help educate businesses: "My role is not in implementing programmes, but in making sure people are doing the right job," he said.

The former civil servant will give up his current job as high commissioner to Australia in January 2000, but in the meantime will be putting together the small team who will work with him in his ecommerce role.

Allan, who worked as an IT consultant in Australia for two years, believes that the lack of IT representation at board level in the UK is "disturbing" and hopes to encourage directors to educate themselves about the wider implications of technology.

He will also be charged with revamping the government's own use of online technologies. "It's slightly disturbing that I can email my mother but not the foreign office," he said. "But that is changing."

Allan will work in tandem with DTI minister, Patricia Hewitt. "We're going to work very closely together, as lead minister and lead official," she said.

Hewitt is particularly keen to co-operate with businesses on an international scale. "We need a new model of co-regulation, so we can look at the issues together and get industry to implement them. We need interaction and co-operation with organisations like the World Trade Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to create a sensible regulatory scheme."