This year is turning out to be a busy time for anyone involved in delivering local authority services. In addition to the goal of having all customer-facing services and transactions available online, it has become increasingly obvious that achieving high ratings on comprehensive performance assessments, and addressing the efficiency agenda, will depend to an extent on finding new ways to harness technology for local government.

So what is the current state of play? The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister recently announced that the National Projects programme for e-government in local authorities will continue to support the rollout and dissemination of services until March 2006. At this point the transfer of ownership of the project’s products to local authorities or other partners will be completed.

It is important to point out that the projects themselves were always intended to have a natural life cycle, and it is our shared challenge to ensure that their products – many of which stand alone – continue to be available. We will ensure that the results of the National Projects remain at the heart of the local e-government programme in the push forward towards the 2005 and 2006 targets.

It is clear that the National Projects are making a real difference. Not only have they been successful in themselves, but they are acting as a catalyst for change in councils’ approach to improving efficiency and meeting their priority outcome requirements and helping them to respond to the recommendations of the Gershon review. We will continue our work of helping local authorities engage with the National Projects and deliver local e-government to meet these ends.

Studies commissioned by the National Projects programme have confirmed that the benefits of implementing e-government are real. Capgemini was asked to look at six of the 22 projects; they confirmed by working with councils who have used the National Project products that local authorities in England could save over £300m and increase their revenue by around £60m a year from implementing those six alone. They also concluded that an added annual service improvement of £1.3bn could be realised.

Collaboration between local authorities has been key to the success of the overall programme so far, and this has resulted in networking and shared learning on an unprecedented scale.

To enable maximum collaboration and as part of this ‘by local authorities for local authorities’ ethos of the projects, we organised a series of events to enable authorities which have taken a lead in new ways of working to share their experiences and the lessons with colleagues from around the country.

Feedback from the large number of Expo and experience-sharing events over the last six months has been used to extend the programme through a second series of experience-sharing workshops and a conference and exhibition in London’s Barbican Centre on April 20-21, which is expected to attract 1,000 delegates and 60 exhibitors. A number of similar events are planned between now and March 2006.

The London event will focus specifically on effectiveness and efficiency – covering the strategic business case and the benefits of implementing e-solutions in local government – in order to deliver on our ultimate goal of offering councils cost-effective, proven, standards-based products, services and implementation ‘roadmaps’ with which to build effective e-services tailored to their citizens and each council’s own unique needs.