Online services in demand

Citizens are responding to councils that offer egovernment tools

Lack of commitment from local authorities is slowing the progress of electronic government, despite citizens' appetite for online services, according to council IT user group Socitm.

Organisations that are leading the way in electronic service delivery are seeing significant take-up from local residents, says the report, Better marketed: achieving success with take-up of online services, published last week.

More than half of planning applications received by Walsall Council in February were made online, for example. And in South Oxfordshire, 55 per cent of requests for new recycling bins were made through the web site.

There are also significant savings to be made. Leicester City processes 85 per cent of job applications online, cutting £1m per year from advertising and print costs.

And figures from Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council put a £16.20 price tag on face-to-face transactions, compared with £1.55 for the telephone and 12p for using the internet.

But despite strong progress, commitment within councils is still the biggest factor determining success. And given the level of investment, the results could be better, says Socitm Insight programme manager Martin Greenwood.

‘There are major savings to be made, but there needs to be a sense of commitment in everything local authorities do and a real emphasis on increasing take-up,’ he said.

‘It needs a strong buy-in from the centre of the organisation to shape the thinking of the service managers. ‘A lot of investment has been put into electronic services and we were expecting to find more examples of significant changes.’

Local authorities are more advanced than central government in the provision of online services.

Some 98 per cent of all the council services that can reasonably be transacted on the web are now available. And research shows that 85 per cent of people in the UK want to be able to access their council out of hours.