Whitehall departments are not to receive any formal guidelines on how to boost take up of e-services, but instead are being offered a set of 140 questions in order to help develop usage strategies, the Office of the e-Envoy (OeE) has said. An OeE document published at the beginning of October 2003 says that despite requests for guidance from "a number of departments" looking to improve the take up of their online services, it is not possible to provide a "generic 'how to'" but instead will "identify key drivers and blockers and share best practices".
The document follows the requirement, set out in the Treasury's 2002 spending review, that each department should develop take up strategies as well as following the 2005 e-government targets. But the document is at pains to avoid sounding prescriptive:
"Departments may wish to use some of the headings as a guide for the development of their strategies, however this document is not intended to imply a template or dictate the format to which strategies should be delivered."
Questions offered to departments include: "Do you know who your current customers are?"; "How do your customers currently use your service and what is their experience of it?"; and "Have you identified what channels your customers prefer to use and for what purposes?".
It also asks departments if they are developing content to be available via the Online Government Store, which is planned to act as a new central repository for e-services.
More controversially, the document also raises the possibility of shutting down offline alternatives in order to boost e-services take up.
"Have you considered/developed policy that allows or advocates pushing one channel in favour of the others in the interest of either efficiencies or customer service. Have you considered disincentivising 'offline' channels (e.g. limit call centre opening hours, un-pre-populated forms etc)?"
Using an example of one key e-service offered by the Inland Revenue, the document openly admits that the lack of suitable authentication technology is holding up progress on take up.
"The Inland Revenue's self-assessment online requires registration through the Government Gateway. 80% of all calls to its help desk are to do with registration problems, either lost, de-activated pin and passwords, or confusion over the need to wait to get started."
Also, with the Inland Revenue's much maligned online self assessment service, the document notes that:
"The Inland Revenue trialled a financial incentive of £10 for submitting self-assessment returns online. It is clear that this incentive was not sufficient to encourage take-up. However, from 2004/05 a much larger incentive (£250 in year 1 and £825 in total) will be available to small employers who file online. This should have much greater impact."
Overall, the OeE also raises the possibility of further changes to the 2005 target:
"2005 is a target date for the Cabinet Office PSA [public service agreement] and therefore services should identify this date as a key target. However, this may only be a milestone towards a more realistic target date. (n.b. many commercial online services expect to reach market saturation at around five-seven years…)."
Quelle: Kablenet
