The UK and eGovernment: Chapter VI, Conclusion

The UK Government has been successful at preparing the ground for future eGovernment projects through establishing a large telecommunications infrastructure, enabling citizens and business to access high speed broadband However, its emphasis on building on contemporary processes of government rather than using it as an opportunity for reform has resulted in it being less innovative compared to countries such as Canada and Finland. Their greater emphasis on interactive, citizen-centric and transformative government has resulted in a higher level of use of eGovernment compared to the informative but one sided approach adopted by UK government websites. The Government has slowly come to realise this problem, with new initiatives such as The Digital Challenge and more recently Transformational Government, which aims to put customer centric services, shared services and professionalism at the heart of UK policymaking through promoting technology advisors on a par with policy, legal, statistic or economic advisors.[1]

There needs to be a concerted ongoing effort to educate the population about the benefits of the Internet in general use and their interaction with government services such as ‘One Stop Shops’. Without this expensive projects will be underused, reducing the growth of future beneficial projects. Expensive marketing campaigns do not appear to work so well, with people preferring to use more standard but inefficient processes such as Google to find their information, making it important for new approaches.

Government drives to encourage use of computers should foster greater confidence in the Internet. As users start to learn more they must be made aware of the options available to them and the benefits. The use of online centres and courses tailored to local needs appears to be working but the investment put in place appears to be very short-term and is already starting to eat away at other projects budgets as funding is drying up. We are still a long way away from making the UK population confident with using the Internet, let alone creating sufficient demand for government services online. The hope that market forces will make everybody consider the Internet to be treated as a common utility is very strong among policymakers. However, if we don’t sustain investment in ensuring that everybody is part of the knowledge economy then it may take a long time before the ‘Digital Divide’ closes.

The coming trajectory of eGovernment is not so clear cut, with policymakers more content to maintain existing practices than face the difficulties of transformational government starting losing momentum for further reforms. To build on the successes of previous projects will require a higher level of effort and a greater commitment to change organisational structures and processes. The future of eGovernment will become increasingly ideological and challenging to the public sector and the relationship between government organisations, citizens and business and will be as great a challenge to public policy as New Public Management and Deregulation did in the last twenty years. This will occur especially in regards to how much the public sector invests in projects, who provides online service, how it is funded and how society will deal with the ‘Digital Divide’. The benefits from countries using more advanced eGovernment strategies are becoming increasingly apparent. However, it is not too late to catch up in order to fully modernise government.

Written by Jonathan McHugh inJune 2007.

Part of Electronic Horizon: An Examination of the Importance of eGovernment and the UK Governments Approach to ICT, the Internet and its Impact on Modern Government

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[1] Transformational Government (Cabinet Office) 2007