Cabinet Office Minister Peter Kilfoyle will have an opportunity to explain the intention and implications of the Channels policy when he speaks to the Best Value and Quality Forum conference in London on 27 May 1999. Conflicting interpretations have followed publication of the papers by the Central IT Unit in the Cabinet Office.
The conference theme is ‘Modernisation and the IT Director’. 

The Cabinet Office denied the prediction of massive job losses across public service made by David Romley in Publicnet on 19 May. In the article
http://www.publicnet.co.uk/publicnet/fe990519.htm he described the downsizing that would result from the Government embracing e-commerce as a major part of the modernisation programme.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “There will be no major job losses. Modernising government is not about cutting jobs, its about better services.