Will UK meet e-government targets?

More than two-thirds of silicon.com readers have seen no change in the way their local council communicates with them, despite looming deadlines for local authorities to improve e-government services by December.

According to a silicon.com reader poll, 71 per cent of the 141 respondents said they had noticed no new interaction from their local authority.

Only 21 per cent said they had seen changes in the council's online approach to the public while the remaining seven per cent said they were unsure.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has defined e-government as "ensuring that IT supports the business transformation of government itself so that we can provide better, more efficient, public services".

Neil Barrett, visiting professor at the centre for forensic computing at Cranfield University, said: "I personally haven't seen any differences. If you look at things you might have expected to change, such as not putting in your name more than once, I can't see any that have changed."

Just last week, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) claimed that 166 councils are on track to beat efficiency targets.

The drive towards e-government is linked to a spending review on the public sector published last year by ex-CEO of the Office of Government Commerce, Sir Peter Gershon.

In the report, Gershon said local governments must save £6.45bn through improved efficiency by 2008. Councils have also been told that services must not suffer as result of these cutbacks and that a maximum of 50 per cent of the savings can be achieved by squeezing existing resources.