Local authorities have on average e-enabled 97% of services, according to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's (ODPM) analysis of Implementing Electronic Government statements issued on 22 December 2005.
The figures provide a good indicator of the effort made by local authorities to develop e-government programmes since March 2000 when the prime minister issued the 2005 target of offering all public services online.
Minister for local e-government Jim Fitzpatrick said that the figures were "very satisfying" and indicated that the targets had been reached. He pointed to research commissioned by the ODPM showing comparable website performance between councils and major companies.
"This is a success story and recent research bears out this transformation," Fitzpatrick said. "After randomly selecting 10 of the best known names across multiple industry sectors in the FTSE 100, we pitted their performance against a range of local authorities across the country. On average, local authorities came out on top in terms of the speed of their websites - and achieved over 99% availability figures.
"The challenge for local government now is to ensure that this valuable work continues and that innovation and focus on the needs of local people continue to be at the heart of local e-government."
The research, carried out by analyst Site Confidence, measured local authority performance against FTSE companies and other public sector bodies.
Average download speed for councils was 23.26 seconds, compared with the general public sector average of 21.14 and the FTSE 100 figure of 25.79. These figures correspond to page size with FTSE 100 firms at 125,101 bytes and councils at 111,326 bytes on average.
On availability ratings, local authorities were at 99.18% and FTSE 100 firms were at 99.94% on average.
The ODPM is now moving on to launch its national campaign for public awareness and take-up of local e-services in early 2006. It is expected to highlight the benefits of accessing council services online.
Quelle: KableNET, 22.12.2005
