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UK lagging on e-government

Tags:
E-Government

Kable

Published: 16 May 2005 13:30 BST

The UK is below the European average for usage of e-government services, according to an EU benchmarking report.

The May 2005 report, by the European Commission's Eurostat service, finds that the UK is behind Germany, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland in the number of individuals interacting with public authorities online. It is also behind most EU countries in the number of businesses obtaining information and transacting with the government over the Internet.

According to the survey, 31 percent of businesses get information from the government online in the UK. This places it behind Sweden (90 percent), Italy (51 percent), Lithuania (63 percent) and Poland (57 percent) in this category.

The picture is no more encouraging for individual transactions. Here the UK is at the same level as Slovenia, with 3 percent of the population having sent forms online to public authorities. It is behind Luxembourg (21 percent), Denmark (14 percent), Germany (7 percent) and Estonia (13 percent) in this category.

The survey measured levels of Internet usage for obtaining information, downloading forms and sending documents during the past year.