UK drops down worldwide e-government rankings

The UK has slipped down the global e-government rankings for the second successive year as departments and agencies struggled to deliver transactional and interactive services to citizens.

The fourth annual Egovernment Leadership: High Performance, Maximum Value survey by Accenture shows that the UK has dropped a place to eighth, with Canada retaining the top spot, followed by Singapore and the US in joint-second. The research quizzed 5,000 regular internet users in 12 countries.

Other European countries fared slightly better with Denmark, Sweden, Finland and France all finishing ahead of the UK.

UK growth peaked in 2002 and the UK is particularly lagging in transactional e-government websites, with less than one in ten users conducting a transaction and most using sites only to find information.

"The UK's online future is still unclear. It reached the peak of its growth in 2002 and has slowed down since then while other countries continued to grow," the report said. "The UK's maturity scores continue to be impacted by the relatively small number of sites that offer full transactional capabilities and the constant struggle to manage interactions with citizens and businesses and deliver service in an integrated way."

The most popular egovernment services are tourism (62 per cent) and health (38 per cent) information. At a transactional level 12 per cent have reported a minor crime and 11 per cent have used online services to determine eligibility for benefits.

Online tax returns, one of the most high profile services pushed by the government has only been used by seven per cent of users and over half have no interest in using that service.

The priorities that would determine if people used e-government services are saving time and money, according to three-quarters of respondents. Those not using e-government want online driving licence, passport renewal and remote voting.

But it is not all bad news for the UK. Demand for e-government in Britain is high with more than 40 per cent citing the internet as their preferred channel of communication with the government. The main barriers, however, are difficulty in finding the right website (25 per cent) and the ease of using the phone (23 per cent).

Satisfaction with government websites has also jumped from 48 to 65 per cent and the number of UK internet users who said they had never visited a government site also dropped from 65 per cent to 37 per cent compared to the previous year.