Benchmarking boost for e-government

Stephen Evans, chief executive of the London borough of Havering, launched the National eService Delivery Standards (NeSDS), one of the National Projects for local e-government, on 18 May, 2005.

NeSDS is intended to help local authorities benchmark their level of e-enablement. The standards will help to define best practice for local authority departments, including employee roles and work processes.

According to a statement from Havering, councils that adopt the standards will be able to identify where to start in delivering more efficient services. This will involve prioritising and understanding how a service could be classified as 'excellent'.

The standards will be developed as a collaboration between senior local authority officials, professional bodies and specialists in each area. A different council will lead each stream, with Havering overseeing the whole programme.

The project follows on from the Parsol e-Planning Service Delivery Standards and will support the Government Connect Programme being led by Bolton Council.

Initial councils partnering in NeSDS are Hartlepool, Northamptonshire, Leeds, Rochdale, Hertfordshire, Brent and Wandsworth. Havering has also engaged consultancies Mouchel Parkman, Deloitte Touche, KPMG and iMPOWER to work on the project.

The first phase will deliver standards for the management of human resources, property, highways, ICT, customer services, adult services, housing and trees.

Each set of standards will contain one or more levels, from 'minimum', through 'good' to 'excellent'. The minimum standard is that required to meet the 2005 target for delivering services electronically set by BVPI 157 and the Priority Service Outcomes.

Evans commented: "We believe that in today's local authority landscape, meeting the Priority Outcomes are a key driver to delivering better value, and we at Havering are committed to providing the best possible service for our customers. We believe the e-service delivery standards will help us achieve this."