The Blair government is on target to meet its promise of putting all public services online within three years - but an update by the National Audit Office of its survey of official webdom says the public itself will need a lot more encouragement to use them.
The office of the e-envoy will need to undertake a substantial offline marketing effort to improve takeup, according to the team of academics commissioned by the NAO to update its 1999 review of official websites and e-administration.
Professor Pat Dunleavy of the London School of Economics, who led the team, said he was not sure the government's availability target had much significance if takeup rates remained as low as they currently seem to be. She emphasised "seemed" and criticised the quality of the data the e-envoy uses, adding that the government had yet to demonstrate that its push for putting more public business online was going to be cost effective. The Treasury, its own track record in e-government far from glorious, should be making a better assessment of costs and benefits.
In Government on the Web II, it is estimated that 40-50% of central government's dealings with the public could now take place online; the target is 100% by 2005. The proportion of government bodies allowing the public to fill in and submit forms online is now about one in four compared with one in seven at the time of the last NAO report.
While the big Whitehall departments have sophisticated and information-rich websites, government agencies are variable. At the time the NAO study ended earlier this year, there were still 66 out of 376 units within central government without a website of their own, though many of these do not have significant dealings with the public.
Among the busiest Whitehall websites have been the department for environment, food and rural affairs and the department for education and skills - its hits far exceed those of the department of health. The ministry of defence, cabinet office and lord chancellor's department are among the least visited, electronically speaking.
As for councils, while most now present basic facts and figures, few allow the internet to be used to access municipal services, for example to report crime or apply for housing. Too few council websites provide links to the police, health service or provide such information as local bus timetables. Only half provided regular reports of local road repairs.
The NAO census of council sites dated last autumn found that only 11% of English local authority websites offer materials in a language other than English. An indi cator of how far councils have to travel to meet the overall objective of getting all services online is shown by the fact that only 4% allow the form to register a birth to be downloaded and only 7% make application forms for adult education courses available online.
The NAO wants the department for transport, local government and regions to devise more effective indicators of how well councils are performing. Like the office of the e-envoy, it needs better, more systematic information about the local e-world.
For all the web's potential to promote freedom of information, it is still hard to find out such basic facts as who civil servants are and what they do, let alone how to get in touch with them. Only a fifth of Whitehall sites offer senior officials' phone numbers, while a third offer their biographical details and a quarter their email addresses.
Prof Dunleavy said the £50m a year office of the e-envoy has so far thought of itself as a campaigner. It needs to mature into an "implementing" role. The NAO study criticised the state's main portal, UK Online. Its "design has been problematic and usage lower than expected." Redesigned in January this year, its homepage is now more useful.
