Draft of Invitation Letter for Education Ministers and Civil Servants (Other invitees got suitably modified versions).
J M HARPER 10 January 1998
I am writing this letter on my own behalf and that of Professor Stephen Heppell of Ultralab, whom I believe you will know well and who is a member of the Stevenson Committee on IT in education. I myself am a former member of the BT Board and Managing Director BT Inland Division. In 1994 and again in 1997 I served as a Specialist Adviser to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry.I should like to invite you to a demonstration of broadband communications and their potential for education and health which we are mounting in the National Liberal Club in Whitehall Place London on 13 March 1998. I attach the programme. BT, Telewest, the Royal College of Surgeons, Anglia and Portsmouth Universities and Stopsley High School Luton are all contributing. There will be formal showings at ....; but the demonstration will be running for informal visits all the time from 8.30am to 5.00pm. We would be particularly pleased if you could come at some time during the day.
I should explain the background. In its 1994 Report on telecommunications matters the Select Committee expressed concern about the approach of the UK government of the time to the development of advanced broadband communications technology for the public services and recommended that it should adopt a more active and co-ordinated approach. I and a number of my senior colleagues in the telecommunications industry agreed strongly with this conclusion. We felt that broadband had great potential for education and health in particular which was not being sufficiently addressed. In 1996 I formed an expert team with their help to study the question in more depth than the Committee had been able to do.
We warmly welcomed the objectives of the Green Paper "Connecting the Learning Society", which we believe represent an important step forward in this key area. The proposals in the Paper are based on connecting schools to the Internet over the conventional telephone network. Our work had shown that there would be great advantages if instead they were connected to a dedicated broadband communications infrastructure constructed specially for the education service; that such an infrastructure would greatly assist the development of applications; that it could be assembled within the framework of current policy for telecommunications; and that properly exploited it would more than pay for itself from the first year of operation. Professor Heppell agreed strongly with our conclusions; and with his help we submitted detailed comments on the Green Paper to your Department on 7 December 1997.
He and I feel that the telecommunications industry has never succeeded in putting across properly the real character of broadband communications and their great advantages to teachers and children compared with conventional telecommunications. We and the contributing companies believe that a vivid and intelligible demonstration will be a helpful input to the policy process.
We need to know in advance who is coming for security reasons. If you can come please let us know, preferably by telephone or e-mail to this address. I very much hope you can.