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By Kate Hanaghan, 4 March 2002 16:30

NEWS The UK government is predicting that within the next 12 months its UK Online web venture will explode with popularity in a similar way to the FriendsReunited phenomenon. The catch, however, is that the Office of the e-Envoy is still unsure what will trigger this explosion. Alan Mather heads the e-Envoy's 'e-Delivery' team and he explained that what he does know is that "tax doesn't appear to be the killer app". He said completing tax returns online might be useful, but it hasn't exactly got ukonline.gov.uk buzzing. Over the coming year the Office will be marketing and refining the site on a month-by-month basis. Mather added: "We've now got a solid technology base of the all the pieces for the first time and we're proud of this. We're now looking at developing the services side - content and transactions." However, he admitted he was "staggeringly disappointed" with the portal's traffic figures which currently stand at around 1.2 million hits per week. In January, the public went wild for the results of the 1901 census, when they were published online for the first time. The site fell over due to the sheer volume of hits. Mather added: "We'd love to have that problem!" Last month a new version of the site was launched and last week it received accreditation from the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNBI) for its functionality. ukonline.gov.uk is hosted and managed by Loudcloud. The company's chairman and Netscape inventor Marc Andreessen said: "UK Online is as good as any technical environment in the world. It is state of the art in every respect and it's hard to find a government effort as advanced and co-ordinated - and that includes the US." However, both Andreessen and Mather were unable to suggest exactly what will get UK citizens clicking with excitement over the next year.