The switched-on citizens of Bracknell Forest, a Thames Valley borough where eight out of 10 homes have internet access, may soon be getting new digital toys. Their local authority is considering issuing council SIM cards for mobile phones so that residents can identify themselves and order council services wherever they are. Paul Bettison, the council's leader, sees the scheme as a logical extension to the smartcards already issued as part of the council's e-government programme.
Bracknell Forest is a pioneer, but it isn't unique in its enthusiasm for e-government. There's a lot of innovation about. This year's Local e-Government Now report* published by the local government IT managers' association SocITM with the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA), bulges with examples of councils doing their job better with the web, broadband and other information technologies.
A lot of authorities, however, are not. Probably a majority are doing the minimum needed to qualify for e-government funding. This is why discussions of how to disseminate good practice from pioneers are currently filling so many e-government inboxes.
The big worry is that good ideas don't spread on their own. Local organisations are rarely enthusiastic about taking up schemes piloted by their neighbours, even good ones. The whole point of being Market Snodsbury is that you do things differently to Little Snodsbury.
Until recently, central government would have just set more targets. But targets (to mix metaphors) are blunt instruments.
A fashionable alternative is to borrow commercial marketing techniques. The hot term in America is "sneeze success". The theory goes that 3% of consumers are innovators, ready to adopt anything new. If the product works, they will infect early adopters (the next 15%) who will in turn affect the majority. (The remainder, the laggards, are apparently beyond hope.)
Such thinking depends on two big assumptions. First, that innovators such as Bracknell Forest will be allowed to try new ideas freely, and if necessary to fail. "We have to start celebrating failure," Costas Toregas, president of the US local government technology agency Public Technology, told Britain's local "e-champions" this month. It is not certain that the audit commission and the office of the deputy prime minister are ready for this concept.
The second assumption is that e-government services behave like commercial products. In the Local e-Government Now report, Kate Oakley, of the thinktank Demos, argues that government cannot be treated merely as a provider of services to consumers: "when citizens become simple consumers of public services, their own ability to shape these services is reduced". The most important public goods - safe streets and good schools - cannot be achieved without citizens' participation.
The logical conclusion is that innovation in e-government won't really spread until citizens start demanding it. However much we sneeze.
*Local e-Government Now 2003: sustaining the momentum. £175 . www.socitm.gov.uk
