By Tim Ferguson, 18 June 2007 13:24
NEWS
The UK has moved up three places in an annual league table of the quality of government services - but the public remains indifferent to new e-government initiatives.
According to Accenture's annual government customer service league table, the UK has moved to ninth place. The league is topped by Singapore, Canada and the US.
But just under half (49 per cent) of UK public quizzed in the Leadership in Customer Service: Delivering on the Promise report said the standard of government services has remained the same - or become worse - over the last three years.
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The report suggests governments are being challenged by newer technologies - such as email and SMS - replacing traditional communication channels, and are struggling as they shift their focus from offering front-end services to making sure they are adequately supported by back-end services.
The report states: "The time has come to create the infrastructure that closes the loop between expectation and experience."
Despite these issues, 77 per cent of respondents said their overall satisfaction with UK government services is very high.
Satisfaction in government service outranks that of private-sector businesses especially utilities and online retailers - as well as banks, mobile phone operators and airlines.
The report is the eighth produced by Accenture examining the challenges for government service provision and practice for 22 countries.
Comments
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1. Karen Challinor
E- Government is a term mainly used to describe ways the government tells the electorate what to do, such as allowing them to pay a bill via the internet
it does not really allow for the electorate to affect the political process
the ePetition site was originally seen as an attempt to do this however the government has yet to change it's policy on a single issue raised on this site and as such it's worthless, it actively hinders other methods of protest such as lobbying MP's which might have more effect
maybe if there were a way the electorate could influence policy and have a voice in parliament, other than an election that takes place when the leading party thinks it has the best chance of winning, then the electorate might be a tad more interested