Race is on to boost e-government take-up

Most local authorities will have their services online by the end of the year - and now the race is on to persuade the public to use them, according to one of the officials in charge.

Julian Bowrey, divisional manager of the local e-government programme at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, predicted that by the end of the year nearly all authorities will have their services online.

"We think there will be on average 98 per cent e-enablement by the end of the programme," he said.

Speaking at the Government Computing Conference in London he said: "I think the e-government project is on course - we are seeing a real change in the way local authorities provide services. We are seeing real benefits. We are seeing increasingly efficient, effective and popular local services as a result of our investment in e-government," he added.

But he admitted that take-up of services is still not what it should be: "We have a big challenge. Most people are willing and interested in doing government services online but the truth is they don't."

Bowrey said much of this is to do with the way the services are marketed: "A lot of that is because they don't know that we do this. Local authorities are not very good at marketing their services and certainly not very good at marketing their e-services."

He added: "The evidence is that there is an audience there but we aren't getting out there and making that message clear."

This is something that needs to be addressed before the e-government programme is completed at the end of the year, he said, if the UK is to get the real benefit of the investments made.

Nick Deyes, head of ICT and e-government at East Sussex County Council, agreed. "We've got to tell people what we're doing. We've got to market it and make sure that we get feedback," he said.