Leader: Why e-government isn't working

The UK has slipped another rung down the e-government ladder, falling further behind leaders including Canada, the US and Denmark.

Despite the huge amounts spent on government IT - and the laudable target of having all government services online by the end of this year - the UK is still rated as a follower in the recent rankings put together by Accenture.

Perhaps it is because in the rush to get every possible service online the real aim of e-government has been forgotten. The point is not to simply spend more on technology but to improve the interaction between the government and the public.

After all, just because a service can be offered over a mobile phone or digital television it doesn't mean that anyone will actually use it.

Technology is great but if you don't understand what the business problem is, no matter how great the IT you come up with you won't succeed.

The real e-government revolution will take place behind the scenes and will be a lot less glamorous but much harder to do. It will involve re-engineering the different silos that make up government at every level and rebuilding them around the citizen.

People want the government to be able to remember their previous contacts with it. They don't want to have to give the same details many times and have different and even contradictory relationships with different parts of the public sector.

You wouldn't put up with it from your bank so why would you accept it from the government?

This is of course a massive task and won't be completed anytime soon.

But the good news is that while the e-government agenda hasn't delivered this so far, executives across the public sector have started to realise what is needed over the next few years.

And if the right plans are put in place, with luck the UK could shoot up the rankings in time for next year's charts.