Accenture's annual survey shows the UK's e-government performance sliding down the league table for the second year running. Its high point in 2002 was sixth position, but it is now down in ninth, equal with the Netherlands.
According to the survey, Whitehall's e-government initiatives have lost momentum with the main website UK Online "growing more slowly than in other countries". It reports that with only a year to go before the 2005 e-government targets, "only a few UK Government websites offer full transactional capabilities".
Despite efforts by the Office of the e-Envoy to improve performance and push the programme forward, Accenture reports that the UK's "online future is still unclear".
The survey measures countries according to sophistication and transactional capabilities of e-services offered. It ranks them under "maturity" scores.
"The UK's maturity scores continue to be impacted by the relatively small number of sites that offer full transactional capabilities and the constant struggle to manage interactions with customers (citizens and businesses) and deliver services in an integrated way."
Also, despite modifying the e-government targets in an attempt to address low levels of take up, usage is still a problem.
Among the UK internet users surveyed, four in 10 have never visited a government website. This compares poorly with other countries such as France, Italy, Spain and Sweden.
One ray of light in an otherwise bleak report is that the e-envoy's 2003 campaign to drive people online appears to have paid off. Over the past year the number of internet users who said they had never visited a government website dropped from 65 percent to 37 percent. The number of UK internet users who rated their country's performance as "fair" or better also jumped from 48 percent to 65 percent.
The Office of the e-Envoy was keen to play up the more positive aspects of the UK's performance in the survey:
"The Accenture report covers many key e-government achievements from the past year: the launch of an intermediaries framework, the fivefold return on investment generated during the Get Started Campaign, and the 28 percent increase in the number of people who had visited a government website.
"Looking forward, Directgov aims to drive take up by transforming the way government interacts with the citizen -- it builds services around their needs, not the needs of government. Recent independent research has indicated that four in five users think Directgov gives convenient access to public services and information and nine out of ten users said that they are likely to use Directgov in the future."
Yet again, Canada topped the league tables with Singapore and the US sharing second place. Australia, Denmark, Sweden and Finland followed with France just ahead of the UK.
Progress in most countries has slowed down as they have reached "plateaus" in terms of innovation, progress and impact related to breadth and depth of e-services offered.
The results suggest there will be much work for the UK's new head of e-government, soon to be appointed.
Accenture says the new head will have to address three key questions:
How will a new strategy improve the performance of government agencies in the delivery of core duties?; how will it meet rising expectations of government services?; and how will it contribute to cost effectiveness in the public sector?
Accenture researchers used a "mystery shopper" approach to conduct the survey. They visited official websites in 22 countries attempting to interact with 206 government services. Services were assessed across 12 sectors: agriculture, defence, e-democracy, education, human services, immigration, justice and security, postal, procurement, regulation, participation, revenue and customs, and transport.
