Councils offered eleventh-hour lifeline as eGovernment deadline looms
Councils struggling to e-enable every service by December 2005 have learned that the most difficult ones could now be excluded from the 100 per cent goal.
Local authorities having problems e-enabling these services would then be able to claim a 100 per cent success rate against the Government's 2005 target.
Every council has been invited to draw up a list of 'difficult' services which, once fully agreed, will then be removed from those which count towards the national target for eGovernment.
The project, being led by the Improvement and Development Agency's esd Toolkit, apparently has high-level backing from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
The move follows a change last year in the way councils have to report progress in delivering the 2005 target.
Councils' state of e-readiness is measured by the Best Value Performance Indicator (BVPI) 157, which tracks the numbers of citizen interactions to be e-enabled.
As part of the reporting requirements, the Audit Commission said in December that local authorities should include services which cannot be e-enabled – for example because of technical or legal barriers – in their BVPI calculations.
This means that any council that has recorded barriers would find it impossible to achieve the 100 per cent target.
The new project is designed to "establish a list of genuine nationally agreed barriers with a view to excluding these from BVPI calculations", thus "enabling councils to reach the 100% target."
According to the esd Toolkit, the ODPM is "looking for an exercise that will help to keep everyone 'honest' with regard with barriers".
Councils have been asked to submit information about their barriers, "affected services and interactions" including those "where it is considered uneconomic or impractical to implement technology."
The esd Toolkit's Deanna Sorrell said the project has already received significant input from councils and was nonetheless a necessary one.
"We need to establish whether national barriers exist and whether some authorities have overcome them and if so how", she said.
"And also where, for sound business or legal reasons, certain transactions aren't being e-enabled, and where this is the case, what those reasons are."
Councils will have until 14th July to submit information to the project, with full details available here.
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