Three per cent of local authorities to miss e-gov deadline

Local authorities will be 97 per cent e-enabled by the end of year, according to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) - three percentage points short of the targets set out at the beginning of 2005.

The ODPM said councils have moved to a '24/7 culture' with services and information available online at all times.

The results are the fruits of the local e-Government programme - a partnership between councils and the ODPM - which for five years has been working to encourage local government to make better use of technology.

Minister for local e-government Jim Fitzpatrick said in a statement: "Over the last five years, local government has taken up the challenge to transform the way that citizens are able to access the services. It is very satisfying that e-enablement targets have now been reached."

However, in February of this year the government said 100 per cent of local authorities would meet the e-government targets.

In March the average council was 77 per cent e-enabled (up from 26 per cent in March 2002), and government research from August predicted that by October 93 per cent of all priority services for local e-government would be at 'amber' or 'green' for implementation.

Between 2004 and 2005, e-government contributed £115m of the £750m total efficiency gains, according to government figures. The ODPM claims this figure will rise to £277m by 2006, £307m by 2007 and £362m by 2008.

Despite the bullish e-enablement figures, silicon.com readers say they've noticed little change in the channels they and their local councils use to interact. In a poll taken earlier this year, 71 per cent of the 141 respondents said they had noticed no new interaction from their local authority, while just 21 per cent said they had seen changes in their council's online approach to the public.

silicon.com's Dan Ilett and Steve Ranger contributed to this report.