Jim Murphy MP, Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, said: "I welcome this report which provides us with a valuable snapshot of projects which have worked well and delivered tangible results. The report will stimulate debate during the Transforming Public Services conference on the tough challenges we face and the strategic direction for e-Government. The report will challenge us all to use ICT to make a real difference, by building on good practice examples to deliver customer-centered public services across Europe."

Beyond e-Government

Previously governments have focused on promoting access and putting government services on-line, but the current wave is more transformative. Significant efficiency and effectiveness gains are attainable for governments focusing not just on implementing technology, but on the transformation of their processes, organisation and people which a new technology can enable. For example, Italy's tax department simplified tax laws, reorganised the delivery structure and then used ICT to automate newly designed and faster processes, resulting in large efficiency savings and improved customer service. The report finds some initiatives are on the threshold of the fourth wave, which will move beyond the transformation of existing services to radically new ways of realising policy objectives enabled by technologies not limited to the internet, but encompassing smartcards, pattern recognition, and an array of others.

"The efficiency gains governments seek through deploying technology are real," says Booz Allen Principal, Mark Melford. "But the big wins will not come through implementation of technology alone, but by the restructuring of your organisation which technology enables."

Examples of real impact emerging, but customers are benefiting earlier than governments

Examples of real customer benefits are beginning to appear in many countries, most often in the form of time savings in the completion of interactions between citizen and government. For example, the US Federal administration's GovBenefits facility has cut the time the average citizen spends checking their eligibility from 60 minutes to 5 minutes. Efficiency benefits to governments are also appearing, but somewhat later than citizen and business benefits, and so far they are generally in millions rather than billions of pounds saved.

Tax & revenue collection is the most advanced amongst major public services in using ICT

e-Government efforts in the field of revenue and tax have reached the highest level of sophistication in terms of the functionality and impact. The study assessed the relative sophistication of e-Gov across major public services such as tax, welfare provision, health, education, transport and public protection, and found most progress in tax. Italy reported annual cost savings of ?90m, Sweden ?2.7m, USA ?110m and Canada ?8.5m. Part of the reason is that more centralised, highly clerical and transaction-orientated services, such as tax and revenue, are inherently more amenable to digitalisation than services such as healthcare and education. Governments are also at different sophistication levels depending on the areas they have chosen to focus on. For example, e-Prescriptions has had major success in Sweden where >45% of current prescriptions are sent this way. Other countries can learn from such examples, thus avoiding "reinventing the wheel".

Governments world-wide are facing common challenges as they seek to unlock big benefits

The report identifies a set of common challenges faced by all nine participating countries:

• Driving government-wide transformation in a co-ordinated way, aligning strategies for all departments.



• Managing the people aspects of e-Government, an often underestimated challenge. For example, delivering a national electronic health record system is a challenge, but ensuring that health professionals are willing and able to use it is a people challenge on a similar scale.



• Sharing information across departments when privacy concerns and legislation are a major hurdle.



• Fostering public confidence in e-services by delivering on projects and ensuring data security.