Main image: A promotional photograph from the Information Society Initiative brochure. Story by Tola Sargeant, 9 June 2026.
Persuading Britain to embrace the internet
Thirty years ago, a government programme set out to persuade British businesses and the public that the internet was not something to be feared. The Information Society Initiative (ISI) — launched with fanfare in Canary Wharf in February 1996, four days after an IRA bomb had exploded in an adjacent building — was the UK’s first major national strategy for digital adoption. Its ambitions were sweeping. Its obstacles were very human.
Archives of IT is now able to reveal a more comprehensive perspective on the ISI project following the recent and generous donation by Charles Hughes, who served as its first Programme Director, of his personal papers relating to this groundbreaking scheme.
The collection includes original survey reports, ministerial briefings, public communications and programme guides that together offer a remarkable primary source record of how Britain navigated its first great digital transition. Skipping through the papers before sending them to us, Charles recalled “vivid recollections of some of the data and activities from 30 years ago.” In some senses, he reflected, it felt like a long time ago; in others, “not a lot has changed.”
In 1994, Charles Hughes was a Director at ICL when, as he recalls, he “received a cold call from a senior DTI official” asking whether he would consider a secondment to help tackle two questions: would the internet have a significant impact on UK businesses, and if so, what should government do about it?
Initially Charles was reluctant to take up the post, but further conversations with the DTI and with his CEO, Sir Peter Bonfield, turned that around, and in spring 1995 Charles joined the Department of Trade and Industry on a two-year secondment, becoming Programme Director of one of the most ambitious digital initiatives the UK government had ever launched.
The Information Society Initiative launch
The ISI was devised to encourage and assist UK businesses — especially smaller ones — to become aware of and successfully implement the internet and associated technologies. Backed by up to £35 million of new government investment, with the expectation that industry would match that figure, it was a four-year programme running from February 1996 to the year 2000.
Secretary of State, Ian Lang, launched ISI with Ian Taylor MBE, the Minister for Science and Technology at the time, responsible for the programme. The launch of ISI took place under extraordinary circumstances. Security barricades surrounded Canary Wharf following the IRA bombing, but the programme team pressed on regardless having been told: “We do not change our plans because of terrorism.”
Taylor’s strong political leadership contributed to ISI’s accomplishments, as did the team’s close ties to industry. Partnership was the essence of ISI and the programme forged strong links with the ICT trade associations, such as the CSA (now techUK), and tech companies, including the likes of BT, Motorola, ICL and IBM, which provided considerable support and practical assistance.
As a result of ISI’s early success, the government decided that a similar programme should be prepared and launched to encourage the public to become aware of, and utilise, this “new technology”. Charles recalls that the DTI was cajoled into running this programme because of the success of ISI and its inherent technology expertise. Thereupon the original ISI officially became the “ISI Programme for Business” and “IT for All” became the public programme.
The launch of IT for All took place in the Conference Centre at the DTI with the Prime Minister, John Major, and a cohort of Secretaries of State and Ministers in 1996. Whilst under the same ISI umbrella, the ISI Programme for Business and IT for All were separate programmes aimed at very different audiences with some overlap in collaborators but with different aims and activities.
Overall, the Information Society Initiative was judged a significant success, and when a change of government brought Labour to power in May 1997, the new administration — unusually — adopted it wholesale. Margaret Beckett became Secretary of State, and Barbara Roche and John Battle assumed ministerial responsibility. A BT secondee was appointed as replacement Programme Director and Charles’ secondment was extended by six months to smooth the transition. The ISI continued in various forms for several years.
Britain in 1996: A Snapshot of Digital Life
The documents in the Hughes Collection paint a vivid and sometimes startling picture of where the UK stood in its digital journey in the mid-1990s. Reading them now is a little like finding an old photograph of a familiar street: recognisable in outline, yet profoundly different in texture.
On the business side, the headline figures looked reasonably healthy. A 1997 survey of 500 UK companies, commissioned by the ISI and conducted by NOP Research Group and Spectrum Strategy Consultants, found that 90% of businesses had computers. The total UK market for information and communications technologies was estimated at somewhere between £37 and £48 billion per annum, and 35% of all personal computers sold in Europe were being manufactured in Scotland — testament to Britain’s success in attracting inward investment at the time.
Beneath the surface, adoption was shallow but relative to most other countries the UK was doing ok – globally it was early days for email and the World Wide Web was barely understood.
The ISI’s research revealed that of the companies that had computers in the UK, only 41% were using email, and just 29% had internet access. A mere 19% had a company website. Videoconferencing — now a fixture of daily working life — was used ‘quite often’ by just 4% of large firms, and was virtually absent from smaller ones. Nearly half of all companies, provided their employees with no IT training whatsoever.
Among the general public, the picture was still more revealing. A survey of 3,043 adults conducted in August 1996 for the ‘IT for All’ programme found that 92% had heard of the internet — but only 25% thought it would be useful to them. Only thirteen percent had ever used it and a mere 4% had internet access at home. By contrast, 84% regularly used a cash dispenser and 78% used teletext. The internet, for most people, was a concept rather than a reality.
The benefits of the Internet are a mystery to the majority.
— Read All About IT, IT for All survey, December 1996
There were also sharp divides by age, gender and social class. Sixty-one percent of men had used a PC, against 42% of women. Among those aged 65 and over, just 15% had done so. White-collar professionals were far more likely to have encountered computers at work than anyone in a manual occupation — and workplace exposure, the research consistently showed, was the single biggest determinant of whether someone went on to use technology at home.
The Five Tribes: Attitudes to Technology
Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the IT for All research is its segmentation of the British population into five attitude groups — a taxonomy that, when you read it today, feels less like history and more like a description of conversations we are still having.
The Enthusiasts — 25% of the population — were young, predominantly male, ABC1 professionals who were comfortable with technology and keen to learn more. Almost a third had used the internet; 70% used a computer at work. “I’d like to be able to work from home,” was their characteristic sentiment, which in 1996 still felt like a radical aspiration.
The Acceptors (21%) were slightly older and more pragmatic. They used technology but were sceptical of the hype surrounding it. “There’s too much change for change’s sake these days,” they said, and “There’s too much hype about new technology.” Eighty-four percent of them worried that society was becoming too dependent on computers.
The Concerned (18%) were typically older people — men over 45 and C2DE women of all ages — who wanted to learn but feared they wouldn’t be able to. “Computers are just for young people,” was their refrain; “The idea of having to use a keyboard puts me right off.” Seventy-three percent worried about making a fool of themselves if they tried to engage with new technology.
The Unconvinced (20%) were largely younger, upmarket women who simply weren’t interested. “I wouldn’t think of using my telephone for anything other than talking.”
The Alienated (16%), meanwhile, were older working-class women who didn’t just dislike technology — they saw it as actively harmful. “I know all I need to know about computers,” was their signature view. Just 5% of this group agreed that computer technology was useful to them in daily life.
These five groups were not merely statistical artefacts. They reflected genuine, deeply held beliefs about what technology was for, who it was for, and what it threatened. The research was frank about the barriers: not just cost, but confidence, social identity, and a sense of exclusion that no amount of marketing could easily overcome.
What Government & Business Were Being Told
The ISI’s advisory materials — also preserved in the Hughes Collection — are fascinating documents in their own right. Written for an audience that might be encountering the internet for the first time, they explain networks in terms of fax machines, describe email in terms of telephone calls, and frame the stakes with a clarity that still reads well.
Networks now are like the fax machine 10 years ago. Companies with them today have an advantage; companies without them tomorrow will suffer.
— Introducing ISI, DTI, February 1996
Businesses were warned with some urgency about the competitive risks of inaction. Ian Taylor, the Minister for Science and Technology, was direct in the ISI’s December 1996 national strategy document: it was vital for national competitiveness that businesses exploit the potential of information and communications technologies to the full, and that they recognise “the risks they face through failure to embrace electronic commerce.”
Yet the surveys showed that understanding remained the most stubborn obstacle. Nearly half of companies believed their employees lacked sufficient knowledge to maximise competitive advantage from technologies they already owned. Price was a secondary concern; comprehension was the primary one. The ISI responded by building a national network of local support centres offering hands-on experience, and by publishing a range of plain-English guides — including a ‘Beginner’s Guide’ to PC networks, email, the internet and CD-ROM.
Prime Minister John Major’s foreword to ‘Building the Information Society’, published in December 1996, laid out the ambition with characteristic steadiness. The UK was already a world leader in information technology, he wrote, but there was “plenty still to do.”
Yet, despite these opportunities, a lack of confidence and familiarity with technology presents a barrier to many.
— Rt. Hon. John Major MP, Prime Minister, December 1996
It was to address precisely that barrier that ‘IT for All’ was conceived: a national awareness programme that would reach those who were not yet part of the emerging information society, through partnerships between central and local government, business and the voluntary sector.
Have Things Really Changed?
Reading these documents in 2026 — in the midst of a national conversation about artificial intelligence that is in many ways uncannily familiar — one is struck less by the differences than by the echoes.
The five attitude groups of 1996 map almost perfectly onto today’s spectrum of AI adoption. The Enthusiasts are the early adopters integrating AI tools into every aspect of their work and personal lives. The Acceptors are using AI cautiously, suspicious of the hype but not opposed in principle. The Concerned want to understand it but fear being left behind. The Unconvinced are not interested. The Alienated regard it as a threat to livelihoods, to authenticity, to human connection. The proportions may have shifted; the categories have not.
The policy arguments are similarly familiar. Then, as now, government and business leaders warned that the UK risked competitive disadvantage if it failed to move quickly enough. Then, as now, surveys consistently showed that understanding was a greater barrier than cost. Then, as now, the training gap was stark: organisations were deploying technology faster than they were equipping their people to use it. And then, as now, the benefits were unevenly distributed — accruing more readily to the already-advantaged, while those with less education, less workplace exposure and less economic security were more likely to be left behind.
Comparing AI adoption today
What has changed is the pace. The ISI was conceived as a four-year programme, and was considered urgent at that. Today’s AI transition is being measured in months. The questions about productivity, inclusion and the skills gap that the ISI was grappling with in 1996 have not been resolved in the intervening three decades; they have simply been asked again, with greater urgency and less time to answer.
There are also, it should be said, genuine differences. Internet adoption in 1996 required hardware, connectivity and a willingness to learn new interfaces. AI adoption in 2025 and 2026 is increasingly frictionless — embedded in tools people are already using. The barriers are as much conceptual and cultural as they are practical. And the stakes, in terms of the speed and scale of economic disruption, are arguably higher.
Yet the ISI story offers at least one encouraging lesson. When Charles Hughes reflects that the new Labour government ‘wholeheartedly adopted’ the programme in 1997 — something he describes as ‘pleasing and unusual’ — he is pointing to something that is genuinely rare in British public policy: a digital initiative that survived a change of government, attracted genuine cross-party support, and continued to deliver. The conditions that made that possible — clear purpose, industry partnership, practical local support and a willingness to meet people where they were — seem as relevant today as they were thirty years ago.
Related content
Read all about IT, IT for All Survey, December 1996
Introducing ISI, February 1996
Government in the early age of the internet
The Hughes Collection comprises a variety of documentation related to the Information Society Initiative and IT for All programmes, including information brochures, fact sheets, presentations, marketing collateral, launch materials, benchmarking studies and strategy documents. In total this amounts to over 1,500 pages, which we are in the process of digitising.
For further information and access requests contact [email protected].