A state-backed electronic marketplace billed as a way to help the unemployed return to work, drive down prices and generate more business opportunities could be launched as early as next year.
Akin to a more sophisticated version of the online auction phenomenon eBay, it would trade in services as well as goods. Downing Street policy advisers are discussing pilot projects to test the idea.
Known as National E-Markets, the idea has been in circulation for some time. But it is the success of eBay, with more than 105 million users worldwide, which has convinced researchers that the time is right.
Its supporters argue that the scheme is now technically and economically feasible because of advances in computing power and the fact that more than 50 percent of households have an internet connection.
Under the model being considered, e-markets would expand into sectors as diverse as tuition, vehicle hire, babysitting, overnight accommodation and office rentals. It would use a specialised search engine to put on screen any list of services required, grading them by past reliability, location and price. It would also allow those offering services to move up grades as they accumulated satisfied customers.
The system would, like the National Lottery, be authorised by the government but run by licensed private contractors.
Unlike eBay it would involve regulation of service providers with built-in recourse to small claims courts to resolve disputes.
Dubbed "People's Markets", the system was devised in the dotcom boom and has languished since the boom's collapse.
The notion of state-endorsed-markets has continued to attract influential support from key Labour policy and computer industry figures.
The chief proponent has been Wingham Rowan, a former presenter of the TV programme Cyber.Cafe, who has written several books extolling the possibilities of e-markets.
He believes the scheme could be Labour's next big idea. "The right legal framework would incentivise private firms to build the infrastructure," he said.
"Their return would come from a pre-agreed percentage mark-up on each transaction -- likely to be below 1% of the purchase price.
"Assuming such markets were widely used they would bring new resources into the economy, drive down overheads, invigorate localised traders, cut public spending and create a more responsive national economy."
He believes that by providing a sophisticated marketplace in which people might sell part-time professional and labouring skills those on the social margins could be encouraged to quit the black economy and return to more productive employment.
New computer technology has also brought the massive calculating power required to run a national e-market system within affordable reach.
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