IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The 'Customer Service Excellence' initiative will lead to a significant expansion in the Council's customer services operation and, in the first stage of this expansion, completed in August 2009, Council Tax enquiries (the second largest call volume area for the Council), along with Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefits, have been moved into the Council's centralised customer service centre. The customer service centre was already handling Environmental Services (waste, recycling, planning, trees, street cleansing etc.) and general Council enquiries. The expansion sees the service centre grow to 30 Full Time Equivalent personnel, a 24 percent increase.

Tenders will now be invited from companies to provide suitable systems that will allow motorists to pay parking fees with mobile ‘phones or other suitable electronic devices.

It is hoped the new systems could be in place by the end of the year making Richmond upon Thames one of the first boroughs in London to employ the new technology.

Darling said he would make a speech on the issue in Parliament on the week beginning 6 June 2005.

It would involve abolishing road tax and slashing fuel duties, while charging drivers between 2p to £1.30 per mile depending on where and when they drive. Their journeys would be monitored through satellite tracking technology.

Town hall staff have seen a huge rise in the total number of e-payments, rising from less than 17,000 in 2001 to over 100,000 this year. Now the council is looking to add more services to the online and pay-by-phone system.

The report said IT services must be credible in order to make e-government deliver improvements to service. "A large slice of that credibility must come from what users think of the service they receive and the degree to which ICT helps them deliver high-quality service," it said.

Charities now have clearer direction on their potential role in eGovernment with the laying down of new 'ground rules' about when, where and how they can engage in public services delivery.

Sector regulator the Charity Commission for England and Wales has put out a policy statement highlighting what it says are the "key considerations" for charities looking to run core public services.

The report shows that, for the first time, there is a greater proportion of households with broadband in the rural parts of the UK’s nations and regions than there are in urban areas. Across the UK as a whole, 59 per cent of households in rural areas now have broadband compared to 57 per cent of urban areas.

Results of a survey by thinkbroadband.com revealed Greater London tops the table, offering more of its users connections faster than 8Meg in the latter half of 2008.

In the survey, of 3,723 postcodes in the south west, the average download speed was found to be 3,192kbps (kilobytes per second), compared to an average of 4,554kbps in Greater London.

Improving transparency and reducing costs have been at the core of the coalition's approach to government since it came to power.

Delegates at London's 360°IT conference heard directly from Bill McCluggage that the government's approach to ICT is no exception.