However, it highlights that the number of councils achieving the top "transactional" status - considered by the report as the standard to which all local authority websites should aspire to meet the requirements of e-government - has now risen to ten from just four in 2002, including, for the first time, two shire councils and one council from Wales. The report also claims to have found considerable growth in the level of transactional services available through websites, noting a 50 per cent overall increase compared with research conducted a year ago.
While most websites have improved steadily over the course of the last year, there continues to be wide variations in the standards of online services provided by local authorities. ‘Mystery shopper’ investigations revealed that although two-thirds of councils responded to an e-mail enquiry within three days, more than 100 local authorities failed to reply. Researchers found that many council websites are still not providing an e-mail address or online form for general enquiries on or near their home page, forcing users to trawl through the site to find the most likely contact.
The report also notes what it describes as a ‘striking’ correlation between good website performance and councils that have an ‘Excellent’ Comprehensive Performance Assessment result.
Martin Greenwood of Socitm Insight, who led the research project, commented that the results underlined that "well-developed websites are much more a test of management rather than technology". He stressed that the findings should not be interpreted as meaning that many local authorities would not meet the official 2005 e-government target, progress against which was not measured.
Quelle: europemedia
