Plunging technology stocks and "dot.com doom" aside, Britain is in the grip of e-enthusiasm. Every customer-focused organisation, be it a bank, retailer, charity or council, is recognising that relationships with users and customers in the 21st century will be increasingly electronic.

But getting the online communication right, as well as the system that drives it, is still a little-understood art. According to a recent Henley Centre report, two-thirds of private sector managers who have commissioned work on websites say agency professionals talk in jargon, deliver less than they promise and at a higher price than the initial quotation.

Public sector bodies, while not accountable to shareholders, are equally as accountable to their service users and to the government. The target is tough: all public services must be available electronically by 2005, and a quarter by 2003.

By the end of next month, all councils must have set out exactly how they plan to tackle electronic service delivery. But progress so far has been anything but stellar: a review of council websites carried out by the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) this year found just one fully transactional website out of 442 council sites - Tameside in Greater Manchester.

There is a massive sense of urgency in getting local services online. But to do so effectively without budgets spiralling out of control, local authorities (and any other public sector bodies) must be sure the systems they buy in or the developers they hire, are up to the job.

"It's certainly difficult finding competent people," said Socitm secretary Bob Griffiths. The range and complexity of local authority services makes it harder than straightforward e-commerce, he added. "There's not just a plethora of information to provide, it must be integrated with back-end systems so people can truly interact with data held about them."

Local e-Government now, an analysis report published by Socitm and the local government Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA), isn't glowing about councils' ability to handle this.

It points to a widespread lack of skill in project management, risk management and procurement. On risk management, Socitm said: "These are not easy competencies to learn - particularly when dealing with the more innovative dot.com start-up companies.

Some procurement guidance will be forthcoming when the joint Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) and Local Government Association review is published. "Large, complex and novel projects" are identified in its terms as a specific challenge.

Valerie Vaughan-Dick, lead executive on technology at 4Ps, the body set up to foster public-private sector investment, said councils take one of three approaches when getting their services online.

Most do the work in house, but buy in specific skills they don't have. Others contract out all their IT functions, stipulating what they want delivered and when. A handful have strategic partnerships with private sector partners that cover the entire authority and aim to tackle wider issues such as regeneration.

Liverpool is one of these, having recently entered into a joint venture with BT to provide electronic services to the tune of £35m in the first year. A £12m one-stop-shop in the city, followed by others, is included in the deal, as is extensive work on the council's call centre.

With such a heavyweight IT partner on board, clearly Liverpool officers won't be awake at night wondering whether they've found the right software developer.

But Socitm stresses these partnerships are no panacea: "It is becoming clear that only large authorities are able to generate sufficient interest from the market," it said.

Brent council's website is cited in Socitm's Better Connected review, as an example of good practice. "Unfortunately we don't have enough money to commission website people - we did it all in house," said the council's information manager Dane Wright.

But when it came to the more complicated programming needed to mesh the site with an existing database, the authority called for tenders, went through the standard beauty contest and "picked the software developer we felt happiest with," explained Mr Wright. The council now works with a Lotus business partner, London-based Riva Consulting. Brent is also buying in ergonomic consultancy for a redesign of the site's look and feel.

Mr Wright agrees that when dealing with companies that have a short trading history and relatively small portfolio - as many new media agencies do - it's harder to be confident about what you're getting into.

"Most other authorities do this by word of mouth," he said. Agencies that do a good job for one council are likely to be picked up by others reassured by their peers' positive experience, so there are now a handful becoming specialised in e-government work.

Mr Wright believes many of the dangers of web commissioning can be mitigated at the earliest stages by getting the brief right. To do this it is vital e-development is not a project owned solely by IT departments.

"We have a web steering group made up of representatives from all aspects of the council that makes decisions about the use of the web - housing, social services, education, libraries, and media services," he said. It sounds like common sense, but many councils still leave service areas out of e-delivery decisions - and then those services encounter problems when trying to apply new systems foisted on them, to their back-office working practices.

New web design guidance is due soon from the Office of the e-envoy, which Mr Wright says will give councils less scope for "some of the wilder things" done with websites, such as front pages designed only with Flash, a heavy graphical interface that many machines cannot cope with.

Tameside - with the UK's only truly transactional council website - was this year granted beacon status for its accessible services. "We're trying to encourage other authorities to develop standards and pool them," said webmaster Nicola Smith. "Certainly anything we develop is available to anyone else for free. But there's only us putting anything into the pot."

Tameside's development partner, Network Designers, was one of only a few companies that could work with the council's back-end software. The relationship has been going for some time and works well, says Ms Smith, but she agrees finding the right company is a gamble.

"It's a shame there are no standards - we're at the front looking around and there's not a lot there."

The whole-council approach is borne out by their success. Tameside's team began with an exercise listing every single service that would need inclusion in the website - 740 in all. The council receives "hundreds" of calls from other authorities eager to learn how they've done it. And as one of 25 pathfinder e-government projects funded by the DETR, the Tameside project will help inform local government as a whole.

Socitm's Mr Griffiths says the local government culture of sharing ideas and good and bad experiences will provide the bulk of assistance councils need. That principle underpins the IdeA's work, and e-government adviser Martin Ferguson says the agency is busy getting as much information on procuring e-expertise out to councils as it can - including an electronic toolkit and running regional seminars.

With support networks cranking up and greater government guidance in the pipeline, 2005 must look less daunting. But getting a full 25% of services running electronically by 2003 is the real deadline: councils' blueprints and much of their systems should be in place by then. If all 467 councils are to make it, it will be with a lot of help from their friends.