• Project Leader: James Cornford
• Sponsors: Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

In March 2000, the government announced ambitious targets for the implementation of electronic local government in England. All English local authorities were to provide 100% of their services using electronic channels by 2005. The government have backed this commitment with £350 million of new money to assist local authorities in implementing e-government in the run up to the 2005 deadline. In early 2001, all local authorities in England were invited by the then Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR - Now the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister - ODPM) to prepare and submit an Implementing Electronic Government (IEG) statement, detailing the plans that they had put in place to reach the 2005 target.

From the information gathered through the IEG statements, it became apparent to the DTLR that there was considerable diversity among local authorities in terms of their understanding of electronic government and in the approaches and strategies which they were adopting towards implementing electronic government. The Study In spring 2002, the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) commissioned a consortium led by the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University to undertake a 15 month study of the process of implementing electronic local government in England. The key questions which the study seeks to answer are:

• How are local authorities approaching the task of implementing electronic local government?
• Which approaches to implementing electronic local government work best in which contexts and why do they work?
• How can we best measure progress in implementing electronic local government?

The study has a number of research elements:

• An intensive strand of in depth case studies of individual authorities.
• An extensive strand using data from surveys, official statistics and IEG statements.
• Validation workshops with knowledgeable informants from local government, technology and systems suppliers and independent academics.
• A Review of the emerging literature on e-government at the local level.

Data from each of these sources will be synthesised to create a coherent theory of e-government implementation, models of the implementation process and improved performance indicators.You can download the full report (4MB, PDF Format) here or a summary (236kb PDF Format) here.

Project Publications Include:

• Cornford, J, Wessels, B, Richardson, R., Gillespie, A, McLoughlin, I, Kohannejad, J, Belt, V and Martin, M (2003), Local -eGovernment: Process Evaluation of the Implementation of Electronic Local Government in England, London, ODPM, November. [WebLink]