Of Gore, Hague and more dot-com disasters

Many commentators believe it doesn't matter all that much given their policies aren't exactly polls apart (if you'll pardon the pun). And when it comes to technology, the picture is much the same.

The Democrats have traditionally been seen as more interventionist than the Republicans - see the aborted MCI Worldcom/Sprint merger and the DoJ versus Microsoft battles for reference - but one former Gore aide thinks that's all wrong.

The aide in question, Mike Nelson, was special assistant for IT in the White House, working closely with Gore in the mid-1990s. In 1997, he became director of technology at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He's now internet strategist at IBM. So he should know what he's on about.

Speaking at the Systems Show in Munich this week, he said: "I don't know any technology area where differences between the parties are bigger than those within the parties... There's a feeling among Democrats and Republicans that we don't want to screw this up."

He for one doesn't believe Bush would be more laissez faire than Gore. He said: "If you listen to what he says you can take different things from different speeches."

Assuming what he's saying makes any kind of sense at all, of course.

Meanwhile, back in the 51st state of America (that's England, folks) the Tories arranged a fairly remarkable soiree on Monday to talk technology. The Conservative Business Liaison Unit invited a Who's Who of dot-com chiefs and 'old school' high-tech luminaries (and silicon.com) to Anouska Hempel's ever-so-modern hotel in Bayswater to quaff wine and nibble some very posh nibbles. They wheeled out for our delectation various right-wing Right Honourables, including Hague, Portillo and David Heathcoat-Amory (the shadow trade and industry secretary). They gave the speeches, but milling around the room were a David Seaman-sized handful of Tory big cheese MPs, including Michael Ancaram, chairman of the Tory Party, and a sprinkling of lords, including Lord Saatchi. (David Seaman has massive hands, in case you were wondering what that was all about...)

The gruesome threesome attacked the existing government's record over some fairly predictable issues: RIP, the Ecommerce Act, and IR35. They promised to "review" these controversial bits of legislation (but failed to say precisely what they'd do about them). The overall message though was that a Conservative government would trust the industry to regulate itself, and that Labour interferes too much and taxes too much. But Hague, Portillo and Heathcoat-Amory spectacularly ducked a question from the floor about BT and ADSL roll-out by passing it over to someone from BT who up until that point had been happily quaffing and nibbling and chatting away.

Once the look of horror had passed from her face, she gave a complete non-answer as well, claiming that BT is moving at break-neck speed and is having to compete in Europe or something (nope, that bit didn't make much sense at the time either.)

So the Tories have no idea quite what to do about BT either. Hague did allude to the almost inevitable creation of Ofcom, the communications uber-regulator. But other than that - zip.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of the specific issues, it's becoming clear that at least in political circles, what was once seen as a peripheral subject for geeks and weirdoes is now being taken rather seriously indeed. IT is a vote winner - and Labour must take some credit for that. The Tory government's last science and technology minister, Ian Taylor, may well have been a nice bloke, but he once admitted in an interview that he didn't know how to programme a video recorder. At least with Hewitt, Allan et al, Labour has put people who know something about the subject in positions of power. And we doubt five years ago if an evening devoted to IT would have attracted the kind of turn-out seen on Monday. So hurrah for that. We've got the grey vote, the pink vote... what colour would the IT vote be? Beige for PC users, tangerine for Mac fans, presumably...

Dot-com cock-ups

Clever people keep going on about how much trouble the dot-com sector is in. A T Kearney has made a major breakthrough however by pointing out that there's nothing wrong with the sector per se, it's just that most of the companies working in it couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag.

The consultancy surveyed 1,264 experienced net shoppers in six countries, and found that online businesses are missing out on a staggering $6.1bn (yes, billion) in sales through their own ineptitude.

According to these virtual consumers, eight out of ten attempted online purchases fail, while one third of transactions require phone calls to complete (see the Thought Leaders/publications section of http://www.atkearney.com for more info).

As if to prove these figures weren't a fluke, consultancy Plaut did its own survey of 25 major UK ecommerce sites, and found that serious problems in order cancellations and returns processes were found in 72 per cent of sites. Only 15 per cent of the companies examined provided a level of customer service equivalent to that expected by consumers on the high street.

Highlights (or rather lowlights) of the research, which can be found at www.plaut.co.uk , were:
Dell: company uncontactable either via phone or email, despite being put on hold by phone operators for more than 90 minutes.
Dixons: retailer delivered goods 21 days after confirming that the order had been cancelled.
Racing Green: customer charged for goods that had been confirmed as cancelled.
Toys R Us: retailer completely lost the online order and could not accept returns by post, and suggested they were taken back to the nearest high street store.
WHSmith: retailer refunded money after goods were returned, minus the VAT and without any explanation.

Shameful really, isn't it?

And finally, thanks to those of you who came up with names for Autonomy boss Mick Lynch's dog on the back of last week's Round-Up. Our favourite? Fetch...

Don't forget, if you're German you might like to log on to http://www.silicon.de , where you'll find lots of German ebusiness news in German (bet you'd never have guessed).

Til next time...