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E-government saves loads of cash, UK claims
By Laura Rohde

The U.K. government is promising local authorities that they stand to save around £320 million (US$617 million) a year by implementing its local e-government national projects.

On top of sizable savings, local governments in England, also called councils in the U.K., could increase total revenues by £60 million per year, while delivering service improvements worth £1.3 billion, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) said on Wednesday. Those figures are the average in a range for each category, according to a spokesman from the National Projects Programme.

The ODPM is basing its claims on a study it commissioned from the French IT consulting and services specialist CapGemini SA, which looked at six of the 22 national projects the government is promoting as part of its push to deliver local e-government by 2005. CapGemini has a contract to do work in the U.K.'s e-government initiative.

The six projects studied were: CRM (customer relationship management); workflow; local authority Web sites (called LAWs); mobile working (called NOMAD); online planning and regulatory services; and council tax and business rate valuation (Valuebill).

"These programs were chosen for study because they are a good sample for the program as a whole and because they are the most well developed of all the programs," said a spokesman from the National Projects Programme.

The government has long pushed e-government's benefits, though it has struggled to meet its own deadline of putting all government services online by 2005. Analysts have long warned that the government will be unable to reach its targets.

Last year, IDC published a report stating that the U.K. government was falling behind its European counterparts in providing its citizens with e-government services. Forrester Research Inc. also published its own findings that the government would fail to reach the 2005 self-imposed deadline, partly because it doesn't understand how to work with fast moving, small e-commerce vendors and how to build partnerships.

But the government continues to assert it is on the right track, though privately sources concede the 2005 deadline is now simply more of a guideline.

The ODPM set up the local e-government National Projects Programme to help all English local authorities achieve the 2005 local e-government targets and develop a vision for e-government within their own authorities. The funding comes from the ODPM, but the National Projects are run by local authorities for the benefit of other local authorities.

The National Projects Programme spokesman said the government doesn't know exact numbers in terms of which councils adopted what programs, but said that 80 percent of councils "are already involved in at least one national project." The spokesman said that "involvement" went beyond simply inquiring about a program, but didn't necessarily include commitment to implement.

The 22 national projects also include a DigitalTV program that would enable councils to run an interactive digital TV channel to publish information and conduct polls.

Representatives from CapGemini could not immediately be reached for comment.

Posted December 10, 2004 04:13 PM |