Many councils are still struggling to get off the starting blocks in the race to make all local government services available electronically by 2005, the government's public spending watchdog warns today.

A survey of councils in England and Wales by the Audit Commission has found that one in five local authorities is still planning its electronic services activities rather than actually implementing them.

One third of the chief executives and "e-champion" council officers that were surveyed said that e-government was too broad an agenda to tackle effectively, and one-fifth of the e-champions - appointed to push through the e-gov agenda at a local level - say they have had no successes to date.

The report concludes that, overall, around half the councils surveyed were still hesitant about delivering services electronically. They were largely smaller district authorities.

Jenny Crighton, the commission's senior manager for public service research, said: "There are a number of councils that are struggling to understand this agenda. The will is there, but they are struggling to understand how the technology can be used."

Some councils are starting to deliver successful e-government through strong leadership and joint working with other councils, public sector organisations and private sector firms. Two-thirds of the councils that identified the 2005 target as the key e-gov milestone said that they were confident of meeting it.

The report adds, however, that other councils are struggling to find the right skills and failing to interest councillors in electronic service delivery.

The authors say: "For these councils, e-government feels separate from, and marginal to, the core business of the council."

They are calling for more government support to help councils go "back to basics" and come up with a better understanding of e-government, and a realistic set of proposals for delivering it.

In particular, the commission wants to see the creation of meaningful central government measures of success in electronic service delivery, and extra help for councils to find people who combine technological know-how with business skills.

Councils themselves need to set challenging local targets and review and monitor their progress against them.

The commission questioned 254 officers in a representative survey of 120 councils.