Culture comes before commerce

Dr Howard Frederick, director of Unitec's Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, says the rhetoric on e-commerce is setting off alarm bells.

"The new Government is more interested in the information society than the information economy," he says.

Dr Frederick says that reflects a sympathy with European social democratic traditions, where the focus is more on culture and society than commerce.

The information society concept is about culture and equity, he says, so access issues come first. "If it's the knowledge economy, business and commercial issues come first.

"They [Labour] gave lip service to the knowledge economy before the election. Since then, partly because of [Information Technology Minister] Paul Swain's sickness and partly because of slothfulness and ideological intransigence, the momentum has disappeared."

Dr Frederick, who co-authored a report on the knowledge economy for the previous Government's Information Technology Advisory Group, says the number of e-government initiatives going on is "underwhelming."

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