Introductory DkTV briefing - September 2000

 

Overview

Smart Communities is a public sector project to create a free-to-air interactive digital television service for a national audience.  This service will be developed by the Smart Communities subsidiary DKtv together with a project broadcaster. 

Where commercial digital service providers such as BSKYB, Ondigital and Telewest provide financial transactions, leisure and home shopping DKtv aims to enable and empower viewers and to give them access to public services such as education, health, and housing and to local and national government. 

DKtv will encourage and facilitate informed viewer debate and provide a service to viewers who cannot or choose not to make use of the internet route to such services.

DKtv will be available to all viewers whatever their digital provider and as a reliable and valued community space within every digital package.

Newham Online and DkTV

Newham Online was instrumental in encouraging DkTV to pilot its service in Newham. It is anticipated that the pilot will operate in the New Deal for Communities area. Richard Steel (Head of LBN's IT and Vice Chair of Newham Online) is representing the Council and attends smart Communities meetings, Richard Stubbs (Director of Newham Online) has been appointed as a director of DkTV.

 

Project management

The Project Founders are The Housing Corporation, the London Borough of Camden, the London Borough of Newham, London & Quadrant Housing Trust and St. Pancras Housing Association (the "Project Founders").

Smart Communities is constituted as a company limited by guarantee with ‘not for profit’ objects.  Each partner has equal representation within this holding company, which is the sole shareholder in the trading company DKtv.

DKtv is responsible for developing and delivering the Smart Communities service.

All project relationships will take place with DKtv.  DKtv will be the public face of the project and a team employed by DKtv will be responsible for delivering all outputs and for managing all work programmes. 

Smart Communities will be a means for the public sector Project Founders and their advisors to maintain an overview of the project and its outputs and to manage it to its brief. 

The Smart Communities board will retain ultimate control and decision making.

 

The DKtv service objectives are to:-

            provide an interactive public service for all viewers and which is by definition inclusive and driven by the individual needs of the viewer and not the imperatives of the market;

            provide a service that is national and local within which the content provided to national viewers will be relevant to their local needs;

            provide a service which is platform neutral between the three digital platforms of cable (provided by Telewest and NTL), satellite (BSKYB) and terrestrial digital (Ondigital) and any other digital providers operatives;

            provide a service that is free for all viewers which does not require any special measures to receive beyond the usual arrangements the viewer may make to receive any DTV service;

            develop new services not provided for elsewhere by the market that put the viewer in control and which provide for individual needs (i.e. in education, health and housing);

            contribute to the development of active citizenship by stimulating informed discussion, debate and decision-making;

            invest in the creation of new services and quality content which reflects the diverse and rich texture of contemporary national and regional life;

            drive digital take-up by providing viewers with greater choice in the form of new community services.

 

Bringing the project into being

To bring the project forward the Project Founders have agreed to support a working prototype of the planned service, which will be tested with viewers in the London boroughs of Camden and Newham.  This prototype plan will allow the Project Founders to investigate whether the project ambitions are achievable.

DKtv will manage the creation of this prototype and its testing. 

Developing the service prototype will involve producing the applications to allow the eventual full service to work, creating the television ‘front-end’ to allow viewers to use it and putting in place a private network to allow this system to work to a satisfactory standard in real time.

 

The Planned Service for Testing

Democracy at Home: Giving viewers the ability to discuss issues of local and national interest and to vote on proposals and candidates in elections.  Content and service providers will include local authorities and housing associations.

Career from Home: This service will give viewers personalised advice and help with local training and employment options.  The Department of Education and Employment and the Employment Service are the preferred suppliers for the service.

Maintenance at Home: Using this service viewer’s will be able to book a maintenance contractor to come and carry out a maintenance service.  The viewer will also be able to score these works when they are completed.  A single service centre will manage these service requests and a controlled maintenance contractor list. 

Health at Home: These services will allow viewers to link with their local health providers to access services and information from a variety of DoH and local authority (i.e. social services) providers.  The key participant to support this service is the Department of Health Executive.  Local suppliers for the prototype services themselves are the Camden and Islington Health Action Zone and the East London & the City Health Authority.

Home from Home: By selecting this ‘homeswap’ option viewers will be able to register their property details in a personal profile, and once registered check which properties on the system they can swap with.  By selecting an ‘available homes’ option viewers will be able to search for empty and available properties.  The HOMES organisation in association with housing providers is the preferred Project Founders for this service.  

Local services: This will allow residents to look-up information on and book local authority and housing provider services such as furniture ordering, rubbish collection, environmental health etc. directly from home.  Local authorities are the preferred suppliers for this service.

 

Key Participants

The key participants identified to bring the project forward are: -

The Project Founders (to deliver service transactions and putting in place a framework to manage the project whole)

A single broadcaster partner (to support the creation of the on-screen service identity and contribute to the planning and provision of the broadcast service)

 

Milestones

It is intended that the project will develop on the following basis: -

Stage 1:

To the start of the development programme (provisionally September 2000-October 2000)

Stage 2:

Prototype development to the completion of testing (provisionally April 2001–June 2001)

Stage 3:

Completion of testing to broadcast launch (provisionally July 2001–November 2001)