Government set to miss online targets

The government will need 'a miracle' to meet its targets for providing all public services online by the end of 2005.

Speaking at a London Internet Exchange (Linx) conference in London last week, Steve Marsh, director of security at the Office of the eEnvoy, said that too much work is being left to the last minute.

'Government departments are planning a miracle for the fourth quarter of 2005. We would prefer important services to be online with high take-up, rather than everything online and no one using it,' he said.

Marsh says there are three main risks for the government's plans.

'That it wasn't going to deliver them at all; that they'd be delivered and nobody will use them; or that they'd deliver the services and find them too expensive to sustain,' he said.

And most government departments have not tackled the difficult elements of delivering online services, says Marsh.

'As we get into transactions and the way services impact people it gets harder,' he said.

The lack of public usage is also a serious problem.

'It looks like the use of online government services is going down, as online buying goes up,' said Marsh.

MPs have also called for a greater focus on encouraging citizens to use the new services.

A Public Accounts Committee report last week said that online initiatives must reflect public needs not the structure of government.

'More web sites need to be designed around specific services that cut across organisational boundaries so that people can access all the information they need on services such as transport, housing and education from a single source,' said the report.

The Committee quoted an example of Customs and Excise electronic VAT returns which are used by just 2,300 of 1.65m VAT payers.

A survey by local authority user group Socitm earlier this month said that more than half of councils will miss the 2005 target (Computing, 12 December).