Government services online are a real benefit

If you believed everything you read in some sections of the media you'd be forgiven for thinking every major government IT programme is unwanted and unloved. Yet the public services we all want are increasingly provided with a hand from IT. I don't think this is so different from the IT we use in every other aspect of our lives.

Banking and shop opening hours, TV schedules and barriers to education are no longer restrictions on our lives. For many of us, a work-life balance can be better achieved by choosing where, when and how we work. Entertainment is there at the touch of a button.

I can tax my car at the push of a button instead of spending hours queuing in a post office and, in the same painless way, apply for a passport. These are all services that make our lives easier. The freedom to access government services online is a real benefit and one we should welcome and value.

While many of the transformational programmes that help to deliver these services sometimes get off to a bumpy start, there is no doubt in my mind that we are now entering an era where the citizen is beginning to reap the benefit from these far-sighted investments.

UK government minister Baroness Andrews recently said, "New technologies offer us very exciting and creative solutions to tackling the social deprivation and exclusion that blights too many people's lives". This is a reminder that IT doesn't just make our lives easier, in a more meaningful sense it makes it easier to live our lives better. Government IT is there to provide the citizen, that's you and me, with faster, cheaper and - most importantly - better public services. This matters to all of us.

A European Commission report published in April says over 250 million people in Europe alone regularly use the internet. Some 80% of them have broadband connections. It may not surprise you that 77% of Europeans use internet banking, but did you know that 60% of public services are fully available online?

In the health sector for example, 57% of doctors now send or receive patients' data electronically compared to only 17% in 2002. These numbers and their rapid growth are evidence of the increase in choice, accessibility and convenience created by this new industrial revolution, not just in Europe, but across the globe with growing internet access and digital inclusion in all regions.

And while this first wave of e-government has been enabled by creating websites where citizens and governments can complete transactions, the future will be far more exciting as mobile technology and Web 2.0 begin to exert an influence that will in retrospect both appear revolutionary, and be taken for granted. Mobile technology in particular will have a role to play in bridging the digital divide as the take-up rate for mobile phones is much higher than broadband, particularly among the less well-off.

The principle challenge for government and its suppliers is to accelerate the adoption, and increase the understanding, of these rapidly converging technologies to create even more simple and compelling ways to extend access and choice to every citizen tomorrow. The IT that enables this transformation does not need to be loved and wanted in itself, but commentators could learn to want and love what it delivers.

Tim Smart is president of BT global services UK

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