News in View: Alex Allan promises e-government on schedule

The UK government's online push will be delivered on time and will offer more ways to access government services.

That's the promise of UK e-envoy, Alex Allan, who in an exclusive interview for this week's News In View programme, promised e-government will mean people have more ways to contact government departments. It will not, he insisted, mean Web sites replacing offices.

"We're not going to be forcing people to one channel or another. We're going to be enabling people who perhaps want to be accessing government services in unusual hours through the Net," he said.

He added that "people who want to go into a government office because they need a face-to-face discussion" won't be neglected, and explained government via the Net might mean using a PC at home or at work, or communicating through a digital TV or mobile phone.

Allan has brought forward the deadline for e-government to 2005 - from a previous target of 2008.

Commenting on the revised e-government deadline, Thomas Power, chief knowledge officer of the Ecademy, said: "They set a target of 2002 for their e-procurement as we now call it, and they're about 18 months behind target for that, so for all of their services to be brought forward by three years - they'd be lucky to hit 2008."

Chris Setz, director of the Network Professional Association, said: "I'm not interested in the actual deadlines. I'm more interested in the political decisions about which things are going to be put online first. I'm not sure the government has got its priorities right."

Allan said the government is learning from past mistakes and successes and pointed to several ways forward, including senior management and ministerial involvement, a peer review process, and a database of projects.

The full News In View can be seen in Silicon.com's Government channel http://www.silicon.com/a36873