Digital TV a turn-off for e-citizens

Enthusiasm for accessing government services via digital TV has fallen five-fold in the past two years, with just four per cent of UK adults now saying they would use it for that purpose.

In 2000, 21 per cent of UK adults said they would use digital TV to access public services.

The findings, from KPMG Consulting, do not bode well for a government which has vowed to e-enable all local and national government services by 2005, and to switch off analogue TV signals by 2010.

The publication of KPMG Consulting's third annual e-government study, entitled "Is Britain on course for 2005?", coincided with the closure of ITV Digital.

Industry pundits widely believe ITV Digital's closure jeopardises government plans for digital television rollout.

In the past year several new services have gone online, but interest has not increased accordingly because the government has not adequately publicised or promoted them, the report claimed.

Digital television also poses more problems as a platform for public services than the PC, claimed David Gardner, a principle consultant with KPMG Consulting and author of the report.

He said: "One of the problems with digital television is the many different platforms - Sky, ITV or who ever takes over there, ADSL from BT when it happens - local councils will have to deal with their local cable company.

"It's very fragmented for interactive services which makes it difficult and expensive. I think there's more a realisation of the limitations of digital TV now."

But if services were widely available online, over a third of the population would be willing to use them, according to the study.

Thirty-eight per cent expressed interest in e-voting, 37 per cent said they would like to be able to book GP appointments online, and thirty seven per cent said they would apply or renew passports online.

But a statistic that should cause concern to national e-government and digital television targets is that 30 per cent of adults still like to access public services through call centres and 28 per cent prefer the face-to-face approach of one-stop-shops and post offices.

A spokeswoman for the e-envoy office said: "The 2005 target is to get services online for users. There are no set take up targets."

Figures from Forrester Research also don't look promising for government targets. They estimate that just 45 per cent of households in the country will have digital TV by 2007. While this forecast beats figures for other western European countries, it falls far short of government plans for 100 per cent take up by 2010.