Norwich given £500k to evaluate e-citizen needs

The government is set to spend a further £500,000 to fund research into how people want to communicate with their councils.

This is in addition to the £2.5m the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) gave Norwich City Council (NCC) earlier in the year to research what people want from e-government, an initiative dubbed the e-citizen National Project.

The £500,000 will go towards running regional conferences for people working in the public sector to evaluate the research findings so far, according to an NCC spokesperson, and to investigate how other local authorities should communicate with their citizens.

An ODPM spokeswoman said the new research is still in the planning phases, and the £500,000 grant is yet to be signed off. She said: "We are funding Norwich to continue to develop the proof of concept work piloted by the project partners last year. Norwich City Council is currently producing a detailed Project Initiation Document which will be signed off by the ODPM before we agree to any money being spent."

From the research to date, the NCC found people had responded positively to government marketing campaigns and that they want to communicate with local government via the internet, mobile phones and digital TV.

NCC presented the findings at an e-government conference in April 2005, which was attended by 200 public sector managers and private sector partners.

The council has said its role will be to help other local authorities maximise "the untapped potential of 17.5 million potential e-citizens in England".