But while a high number of services are available in a basic online form - chiefly providing information - "we have seen few examples of services maturing over the past 12 months", concludes the study. "The overall depth of service is below the average of countries assessed in this study."
Relatively few transactional services - where citizens could claim benefits or make payments online - were available. The lack of real functionality, or of services grouped according to customers' needs, was contributing to low take-up.
Only one in 10 people had used government services online compared with half the Canadian population which, for the third year running, topped Accenture's league table as the country that had most transformed its services.
It heads the US, Singapore, Finland, Australia and Hong Kong, all early leaders in e-government, who remain grouped with the UK as heading towards mature delivery. The UK is ranked eighth this year, against sixth last year.
Canada allows businesses to manage their postal accounts online, provides a wealth of updated charts, weather forecasts and navigational aids from its marine service, and allows pensioners and farmers to handle benefits and grants through a single application for many different programmes.
A significant change, which Accenture says governments more generally should make, has been shifting the government target from getting everything online to providing real benefits from the most frequently used services.
Steve Dempsey, government partner with Accenture in the UK, said the UK was doing a good job of getting broadband and other infrastructure in place that would provide the technological backbone for value added service.
It was also starting to look for partnerships with the private sector - such as estate agents, banks, accountants and student services - that could ride on the back of the government services, thus boosting take-up.
The JobCentre kiosks, which offered every vacancy the employment service knew about, had been innovatory. And there was some international evidence that once take-up barriers were breached, take-up could rise dramatically.
Quelle: Financial Times
