Meeting documents

1 THE ISSUE

1.1 The Council is required to produce an annual "Implementing Electronic Government Statement" (IEG) for submission to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. It sets out how the Council plans to meet the national target for e-government, making all possible services available electronically by the end of 2005. The IEG Statement is part of the Council's Policy and Budget framework.

2 RECOMMENDATION

2.1 The Council Executive is asked to approve the attached Implementing Electronic Government Statement as part of the Council's Policy and Budget framework for recommendation to Council.

3 FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

3.1 Section 5 of the draft IEG4 Statement sets out the overall resource implications to 2007/8, which are estimated at approximately £11.97m. This assessment has been based on planned and required projects, although funding sources have not yet been identified for some proposed areas of work.

3.2 Projects that have been identified as necessary by this and other exercises will be subject to the preparation of business cases by the HBS Business Improvement Service and approval by the Council's Partnership Board.

3.3 Once the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has approved IEG4, then a payment¹ will be made to the Council to assist in the achievement of its E-Government targets.

4 THE REPORT

4.1 In 2001 the Government set a target that all services that can be delivered electronically, should be by 2005. They required each local authority to produce a statement setting out how this would be achieved. The first such IEG Statement was produced in October 2001. Bath & North East Somerset had already adopted a Customer Access Strategy in 2000, and this formed the basis of our approach to implementation of e-government. A satisfactory Statement was produced and this resulted in a supplementary allocation of £200k capital. Second and third IEG statements were prepared and successfully submitted in 2002 and 2003 respectively for which two capital payments totalling £550k were received.

4.2 In 2002, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister issued a national framework for local e-government (egov@local - http://www.localegov.gov.uk). This was subsequently supplemented by the Priority Service Transformation Outcomes, which list a range of `required', `good' and `excellent' outcomes to be achieved. At the end of October, a pro forma for production of IEG4 was issued based on the framework set out in e-gov@local and the PSTOs. This was compatible with the Council's existing Customer Access Strategy, but required further development of some aspects of our planning, and a different presentation of information.

4.3 Implementing electronic government will impact on all aspects of the Council's activity including organisation culture and structure. Directors and Heads of Service have been briefed and consulted, and all Heads of Service have been asked to contribute to forward planning. All Service Plans for 2004/5 should include planned e-government developments to meet the 2005/6 target.

4.4 The Council's progress in meeting this target is measured through Best Value Performance Indicator 157. It was previously estimated that some 60%² of the Council services that are capable of being delivered electronically were available electronically. Since adoption by the authority of the ESD Toolkit (http://www.esd-toolkit.org - the ODPM recommended tool for measuring performance), the Council's current stated performance has dropped to 55.72%. Current predictions using data collected from services indicate that the Council will achieve 65.29% against the Government's target of 100% at the end of 2005. This drop reflects a change in methodology to a more robust, in-depth measure of e-Government performance.

4.5 The Council will be accountable to the Office for Deputy Prime Minister for delivering the commitments in its IEG4 Statement and assessment of progress is likely to be included in any future Corporate Performance Assessment. E-government will be competing against other demands on resources.

5 RATIONALE

5.1 The information within the pro forma has been compiled by the E-Government Co-ordinator, and has been a collaborative effort with key staff across the Council and within HBS. It makes reference to Council policies and the Customer Access Programme, and outlines the Council's development plans within the framework given.

6 OTHER OPTIONS CONSIDERED

6.1 None.

7 CONSULTATION

7.1 The IEG pro forma has been widely circulated to Director's Group and other senior managers and key officers across the authority. E government priorities have been guided by national and local surveys including Voice Box. Council staff are also in contact with their counterparts from other local authorities in the area and planned developments are discussed to identify areas where collaboration would increase efficiency and effectiveness.