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PRIME MINISTER Report from the e-Minister and e-Envoy - 3 February 2003 This progress report is the first since the e-Summit last November. We would like to use this opportunity to provide a brief summary of priorities and activity planned for the year ahead. Your keynote address at the e-Summit made clear that the UK's environment for e-commerce has grown to be one of the strongest in the world. Public policy has played an integral role - and continues to do so. In recent months the Home Office and DTI launched campaigns to increase the safety of both children and shoppers using the Internet. Last year, there was an 11 per cent rise in awareness among children to not give out their personal details online; and over the Christmas period the number of people visiting retail sites online increased by 3.8 million to 12 million. However, you made it equally clear that although we are doing well, there was no room for complacency. Some aspects of the UK's performance are stronger than others and take-up of online Government services is a particular area of concern. So, over the coming year we will be focusing our efforts to ensure that departments meet your enhanced target for electronic service delivery: getting all services online by 2005 with key services achieving high levels of use. In order to help achieve this we will be implementing new measures, recently announced by Douglas Alexander, to improve Government's approach to IT projects. Departments will be spending over £6bn on ICT over the next three years. It is therefore imperative that we ensure projects are better managed, procured more smartly and delivered on time and to budget. Peter Gershon in the Office of Government Commerce will be leading this work, collaborating closely with key delivery departments. However, this is only the first step. ICT has the potential to radically enhance the delivery of public services - improving efficiency, effectiveness and customer focus. That is why you tasked the Office of the e-Envoy with developing a strategy to fully capitalise on this opportunity. At the heart of our approach, we will be building on the existing success of the one-stop-shop approach to delivery. The Government Portal (ukonline.gov.uk) is an example of a one-stop-shop that is beginning to achieve significant results. November saw the Portal's highest traffic to date: the number of unique users rose to over half a million - up from 44,000 last February. It is now one of the top ten Government websites. We have also recently launched two major new content areas: a new Life Event provides specific information targeted at people wanting to start their own business; and the new YoungGov area of the site presents information specifically for 11-18 year olds. Both are proving extremely popular with their target audiences. UK online has also launched an innovative third party collaboration with the unveiling of the Public Services channel on MSN (msn.co.uk). The pilot, which will be actively promoted on MSN next month will enable customers to access and use a range of Government information through a single web service not directly run by Government. This is the first time a third party has been used in this way and talks are being held with other companies considering similar ventures. These two examples have given us clear evidence that the one-stop approach to delivery works. Integrating service offerings around customers' personalised needs is not only the key to increasing take-up of services but also represents the cornerstone of modern public service reform. The Office of the e-Envoy will therefore be working with Ministers and key departmental officials to develop and implement a strategy to further our work in this area. This will involve building on Government's existing and planned infrastructure; drawing on successful best practice from international Government and Industry experience; and applying our extensive cross-Government knowledge base gathered over the past two years. Over the next few months, we will be providing you with regular progress reports on our activity.
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