UK Online must redouble its efforts

Early last month one of the e-envoy's key advisers predicted great things for UK Online, the focal point for the government's electronic delivery efforts. The web venture will explode with popularity in a similar way to the FriendsReunited phenomenon, Andrew Pinder's lieutenant boasted.

Today, a National Audit Office report paints a different story. It has identified some serious shortcomings in the government's online strategy. Specifically it says individual departments have no idea how to get citizens to use their websites. Moreover, the report claims the government has a cultural issue with IT.

Well we've always known that Whitehall and Westminster have had issues with IT no matter how many 'white heat'-esque rallying cries Tony Blair makes. W1 is no Silicon Valley.

In the run-up to last year's general election we emailed 500 MPs as a 'concerned constituent' seeking advice on an issue of the day. Just 38 per cent responded.

Put it another way - nearly two-thirds of those electioneering, vote-grabbing members of Parliament either couldn't be bothered or couldn't work out how to respond to potential voters during the most critical period in the life time of a Parliament.

So thanks, NAO, but we've got those "cultural issues" covered.

But none of this should stand in the way of making a success of UK Online. It just requires a little imagination. It's hard to believe that some of the most well educated minds in the country - in the guise of senior civil servants and ministers - cannot conceive of ways to take paper-intensive processes online.

Big business is starting to make it happen, after all. Consider General Electric, one of the world's biggest companies. Next year, it says, 70 per cent of its supplies will be bought online. For business-to-business read government-to-citizen.

The e-envoy remit is to champion this cause and not let the Luddites and non-believers dictate the pace. The NAO's report won't have told Andrew Pinder anything he didn't already know.