Online government is letting down the people who need it most, according to an authoritative survey of government websites published today. Anyone needing internet help in such crises as getting into debt or applying for state benefit will have trouble finding and using the relevant government websites. An inquiry for impartial advice on consumer debt lead to a money-lender's site, for example, while a benefits site carried warnings that its contents might be out of date.
Not all the findings are bad news. It finds several gems among public sector web sites and suggests simple steps, such as additional links, that could lift others to the same standard. However, it will not be welcomed by the Office of the e-envoy, responsible for the e-government programme. Its portal site UK Online came in for criticism as "patchy" and for not taking citizens' perspectives into account.
The survey is significant because it was carried out by Citizens Advice, which represents citizens' advice bureaux (Cab), and SocITM, the local government IT managers' association, to test e-government from citizens' points of view. Until now, evaluations of online government have nearly always assessed progress by agency or specific function.
The survey, Better connected: advice to citizens, sets out the 10 most common problems that take people to advice bureaux, ranging from debt to troubles with benefits, employment terms and conditions and the breakdown of relationships.
For each "life event", the survey team investigated what a citizen would find from a Google search in everyday language, on a search limited to .gov.uk websites, and what government and local authority websites catering for the problem offered.
The most frequent reason for people to contact Cab is consumer debt: enquiries about consumer credit and debt have risen 46% in five years, and continue to rise. But entering "money problems" in Google took researchers to a Guardian report on Cambodia. "Debt advice" found a site describing itself as a free source of help, but promoting unsecured loans. However, when researchers did find the Financial Services Authority, they found it gave useful advice and is relatively joined up.
The second most common problem is disability benefit. A Google search on "disability benefits" got through to www.disability.gov.uk, a site from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This won praise for clarity and forms available for completion online. However, the effort was marred by a notice at the foot of each page warning the site was likely to go out of date as legislation changed. The verdict was that this warning "totally undermines confidence in the value of the site". The reviewer commented: "Surely it is incumbent on the DWP to keep its own forms on its own site up to date?"
Local authorities did less well: only two of the 15 reviewed were able to point people to the DWP for benefit.
"This is a key area where local councils should be signposting local people to relevant central government information," the report said.
A search for employment terms and conditions - an area in which 250,000 people contact offices each year - leads to three universities' personnel pages and three local councils. This bizarre because the Department of Trade and Industry's site - www.tiger.gov.uk - is specially designed to give a user-friendly guide to employment law. This site scores highly -if you can find it.
Other government sites that had good reviews were the community legal advice site www.justask.org.uk and the utility-comparison site www.energywatch.org.uk.
However, people seeking information on housing benefits (claimed by nearly 4m) have a tough time. The Google search found an out-of-date link to the now-defunct Department of Social Security. Most local authorities, which process claims, had little more. None provided a link to the DWP's generic housing benefit form available on its site.
The study concludes that all parts of government should restructure their electronic information around questions that citizens are likely to ask. "Just the list of common problems and the questions that might be linked to them are in themselves valuable sources of information."
Online forms, in particular, need attention. These must be guaranteed up to date. "It is difficult to interpret this in any other way than as evidence of a culture within the department that has not committed to... the new ways of thinking demanded by the... practice of e-government."
UK Online is due to be replaced by the Online Government Store: Citizens Advice makes a case for "intermediary" organisations such as itself playing a role in the new service. UK Online is supposed to contain information based around real life events. However, reviewers could find no information about disability benefit (claimed by 2.5m people) or debt.
The government has a double target for going online: by the end of 2005, all its services (where possible) must be available electronically and the most important must be heavily used. David Harker, chief executive of Citizens Advice, says the way electronic public services are designed make it unlikely the target will be achieved.
Better connected: advice to citizens
www.socitm.gov.uk
