IT AND e-GOVERNMENT

1. The Cabinet has approved the IT and E-Government Annual Performance Report setting out the County Council's progress and planned developments. These issues are key to many of the County Council's aims and objectives and represent a major investment.

2. The year 2002 was, to some extent, a turning point. The County Council's IT2000 strategy has been implemented as planned and within budget and a new, in many ways, more ambitious programme is now underway, the main elements of which are:

· delivering the new technologies to the "hard to reach" parts of the County Council - the small and remote sites where the economics and technology are most challenging;

· extending the reach and range of IT services to other public service organisations, breaking down traditional organisational barriers and demonstrating the value of collaboration across boundaries;

· making e-Government a reality for the public and front line services, helping to re-engineer traditional service methods and processes and harnessing new technologies to deliver better services to the public.

Good progress is being made in these areas but much remains to be done. At the same time, critical legacy applications need to be maintained and the transition from older technologies managed. In addition, infrastructure needs to be developed to support the implementation of e-Government plans, the range and reach of new facilities needs to be extended to all parts of the Council and its partners, organisational change programmes need to be supported and responses given to the growing demands of users for new technology.

3. Priority will be given to those areas where the most significant benefits to public service or organisational effectiveness can be achieved. Some desirable developments may, therefore, need to wait to enable the return on investment to be maximised. Corporate commitment and support are crucial to success as in all other area of the County Council's activities.

4. With particular reference to e-Government, for the past two years the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) has required every local authority to produce an Implementing e-Government Statement (IEG) as to how they intend to deliver services electronically by 2005. The County Council's statement was accepted as submitted. It is hoped that the County Council's "excellent" status will lead to a lighter touch next year. In the context of the IEG, the County Council's new ICT strategy is being developed to replace the IT2000 approach. The broad priorities and direction are to:

· show how the e-Government programme contributes to the County Council's corporate aims, especially the close links to the community strategy;

· show how the main IT priorities support the e-Government programme;

· provide a clear link between technology infrastructure investments which need to be made and the requirements for core business systems for departments and front line services;

· include a plan and resource model for implementation.

5. Every effort is being made to deliver all services electronically by 2005 where possible and all concerned will need to make a consistent and sustained effort in the remaining 2/3 years to achieve the targets they will be setting in their own e-Government/IT plans. The Cabinet has welcomed the progress being made and is confident that this will continue.

6. The full report presented to the Cabinet on 28^th April 2003 can be found on the County Council's website, and a hard copy is in the Members Room.

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