The Cabinet Office has refused to renew British Telecom's contract
to run the government's flagship UK Online portal.
A terse joint statement said: "Although the original negotiations
have ended, BT and the Cabinet Office are presently reviewing the
best way forward for the portal. This includes evaluating an
alternative relationship between BT and ukonline.gov.uk. This will
cause no disruption to the UK Online service."
BT was chosen to develop and run UK Online in April 2000. The
original contract to run the site until July 2001 was extended for
one month to allow further negotiations.
The E-Envoy's department may now appoint an alternative supplier or
bring the project management in-house under the team that runs the
Government Gateway.
John Ludlam, web resource manager for the e-centre, the UK
e-business association, was not surprised that BT lost the
contract.
"UK Online is a completely inflexible site," said Ludlam. "BT was
using it as a showpiece for a move online but it was not interested
in making the effort to create a Web site that would attract
citizens and businesses online. Part of its goal was to promote
e-transactions, but anyone using it would soon be put off doing
anything online."
"The government must not hook up with another big media partner,"
added Ludlam. "A specialist Web site company would do a much better
job, or the whole project should be handled by the government
Gateway team."
Mary Wintershausen, an e-government consultant for Socitm, the
local authority IT directors' organisation, told CW360 that new
competition for the UK Online contract would be good for
e-government services. "Local government has benefited greatly from
having a very competitive environment for its IT contracts.
Competition is always good news," she said.