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By Polly Raymond, 4 November 1998 00:15

NEWS UK local authorities are completely unprepared for electronic government even though they are extremely keen to automate public services as soon as possible, according to a report by First Software. The poll was taken at last month's Virtual Town Hall Conference in London, which was organised to give local authority managers an idea of the shape of things to come in electronic government. The suggested technologies that will make up part of local government are call centres, electronic kiosks and smartcards, which will link citizens with local authorities and public services. First Software - which supplies business software to many local authorities across the UK - found that 80 per cent of the attending authority representatives said they are well aware that these technologies are going to be central to their services. However, 38 per cent of these haven't even begun to put programmes in place to handle these plans. The news comes just weeks after the Department of Trade and Industry released its ecommerce white paper, which aims to make 25 per cent of government services electronic by 2002. David Gilbert, a spokesman for First Software, said: "It's looking unlikely that local authorities will meet these deadlines but that may not be too important. Percentages are not important, the real issue is actually motivating the people."