Weed out failure

The Government will axe failing e-business projects and offer financial incentives to individuals who successfully implement the electronic service...

The Government will axe failing e-business projects and offer financial incentives to individuals who successfully implement the electronic service delivery of government services.

The move, part of a £1bn investment over three years, announced by prime minister Tony Blair, will see the Government making efforts to ensure that e-government is "joined up" - with services focused on the public needs, rather than government departments.

The Government admitted, in a new Performance and Innovation Unit report, that:

It is not doing enough to maximise use of online services

The incentives to realise the full potential of service delivery may be absent

E-government needs a stronger, Cabinet-based, six-monthly focus

Parts of government still perceive electronic service delivery as an optional extra, and not central to its business.

The 124-page report, mirrors the Performance and Innovation Unit's similar report published last year on the Government's e-commerce efforts as a whole.

If the Government is to meet its online services target by 2005 it will have to:

Set up an "incubator" project, which will develop new ideas in isolation, test them, create prototypes, and then roll them out quickly

Sharpen financial incentives for electronic service delivery, introducing new bonus schemes to reward successful delivery

Make funding for electronic government projects conditional on "robust departmental strategies and rigorous appraisals of project proposals"

"Ruthlessly weed out" any unsuccessful government e-ventures.

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