As public purse strings tighten, councils will inevitably be tempted to break what many in local government regard as the last and most powerful taboo: Placing commercial adverts on their websites.

Leading the way in this field has been Lincolnshire County Council, who I spoke with back in 2008 when they were experimenting with carrying paid-for online ads.  The Council had faced a huge uphill struggle just to get that far; one of the biggest challenges was attracting the interest of online advertising agencies - many of which wouldn't even let Lincolnshire through the door.  But in the end the Council's persistence paid off and a digital media agency was eventually convinced, resulting in www.lincolnshire.gov.uk carrying multiple ads for huge brands like Orange, AOL and Sony.  Naturally there were some internal doubts, reservations and also complaints about some saw as the effective commercialisation of a public service.  Local councillors, however, apparently needed little persuading about the benefits of generating revenue off the council's website.

From the outset Lincolnshire understood the risks of 'inappropriate adverts' and developed a blacklist banning certain types of adverts from appearing - such as those promoting alcohol, gambling and sex sites. Staff at all levels of the council were involved in discussions about what was acceptable, forming the basis for an exclusion list provided to its agency.

Now compare and contrast this approach with that of nearby Nottingham City Council, which has been using Google's AdSense system since 2008 to display targetted Pay-per-Click based on the content of its pages. The Council is clearly very impressed with results so far, even appearing as a client case study on Google's website.  Dominic Miller, Nottingham's Corporate Marketing Manager is quoted as saying: "With the ease of use and minimal impact it has on staff and resource, AdSense is a great opportunity to sit back and watch your site generate income."

Unfortunately, in Nottingham's case, it also appears to be a great way to sit back and watch your council's reputation disappear at internet speed.  Adrian Short took a quick look at what Google ads the Council's website was serving up:

"Variously, I found numerous ads that seemed to act against the direct interests of the council, preyed upon some of the most vulnerable local residents or were just downright sleazy or inappropriate.

Specifically:

• firms specialising in business rates avoidance on empty commercial properties
• payday loans at extortionate rates of interest, often over 1000% APR (you read that right)
• stag and hen nights featuring visits to strip/lap-dancing clubs
• pole dancing lessons
• solicitors specialising in defending people on tax and benefit fraud charges
• exercise and diet programmes of dubious worth including the infamous “1 tip of a flat belly”

Which is interesting given Nottingham's case study from Google tells us:

"When in the past adverts have appeared promoting services that are in direct competition to services the council itself provides, it’s been a simple job to block specific advertisers or whole categories of advertisers from appearing on the site. “It’s just a case of going into the AdSense programme online,” Dominic says. In general,though, maintaining AdSense demands absolutely minimal internal resource."

Hmmm. Nottingham seems to be not the only council in this boat - North East Derbyshire Council's debt advice pages also bring up Google ads for companies offering loans and similarly questionable services, contradicting its own advertising policy.

I don't agree, however, with Adrian's conclusion that councils shouldn't use Google's AdSense because of the reputational risks.  AdSense certainly isn't perfect in terms of control, just as there's always a tacit reputational risk with permitting third-party content onto your website - such as allowing reader comments, Twitter trackbacks and RSS feeds. Admittedly AdSense is a rather different kettle of fish, but the risks can be - should be - managed by filtering adverts and monitoring them regularly for relevance and potential embarrassment.

That said, I'm still very confused by the obvious disjunct between Nottingham's confidence in the Adsense filter and Adrian's quite worrying findings. What gives, Google?

Top story in today's e-Gov Bulletin is something of a historic event - the appointment, they report, of the 'first council social media officer':

The first local authority worker employed to handle and shape a local authority’s social media output has been appointed by Brighton and Hove City Council.

"As the council’s social media officer, Jane Postlethwaite’s responsibilities include creating strategies to develop its use of sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, and monitoring online discussions about the council."

This news will doubtless have come as a surprise to many, not least Futuregov's Dominic Campbell who was employed as Barnet Council's social media officer back in May 2008, as well as Al Smith, communications adviser on Web 2.0 to Newcastle City Council since 2008.  But that slight factual error - which eGov Bulletin have since corrected - isn't really the point.

There's a far more interesting story to report here. Which is that just very recently the same Brighton and Hove City Council, like many other local authorities in its position, disclosed it was looking to axe more than 150 staff jobs, as well as cut spending on social care and children's services due to budget constraints.

In spite of this financial crisis, the Council - evidently - regarded social media to be of such importance to warrant employing a new, full time dedicated member of staff (albeit according to the job ad, only on a temporary six month basis).

The prominence e-Gov Bulletin gives this appointment seems to suggest it represents some pivotal watershed moment in social media's journey towards mainstream acceptance in local government.  But as the saying goes, one swallow doesn't make a summer, just as one social media officer doesn't make a trend. At the recent GovCamp it was argued the recession is a reason for Government to employ more, not fewer, digital people. My hunch is it's more likely that when the post-Election crunch comes on public sector job cuts, the 'social media officer'-type posts  will be those particularly vulnerable.  All the more reason why those working in these roles need to be building up hard evidence - now - to demonstrate the value they bring to their organisation.

So Jane, from myself and and no doubt lots of readers here: All the best of luck in your new role.

A quick peruse of MySociety’s excellent TheyWorkForYou.com reveals the Conservatives have been rather busy lately tabling a raft of parliamentary questions (PQs) – several dozen in fact – about the cost of redesigning government websites.   Specifically, the sums spent by Whitehall on revamping their web offerings since 27 June 2007, the date Tony Blair handed over the reins of power to Gordon Brown.

Sure enough, the PQ responses made brief headlines towards the tail-end of last year, when the Telegraph reported that government departments had spent £4m on redesigning their websites.  The Taxpayers' Alliance lobby group immediately jumped on what they saw as yet another example of Whitehall waste, with Campaign Director Matthew Elliot commenting:  ”This astonishing £4 million figure shows departments must concentrate on content rather than the appearance of government websites. Many of these sites look a lot better than they actually are.”

However the outrage may have been slightly premature. Because since then, a further 13 government departments and agencies have come forward with details of their spending.  And as UKAuthority.com reports, their responses bring the total cost of Whitehall’s website redesigns to £10m – more than double the £4m sum previously thought.

The figures include a £513,000 redesign of the Department for Health website and £216,000 spent by the Department for Work and Pensions on a web redesign last year.  Work by the Department for International Development to redevelop its website has also cost close to £1 million, according to the figures ministers disclosed.

Some of this work was clearly important to improve the quality of government websites. For example the Ministry of Justice, which redeveloped its site last year, reported that visitor numbers to justice.gov.uk had more than doubled since the Department was formed in 2007.

Other departments’ responses were somewhat more difficult to comprehend, such as how the Communities and Local Government managed to run up a whopping £1.2m bill developing its new – and very unremarkable – departmental website. Or why the Office for National Statistics, say, needed to pay £218,000 in July 2009 to enhance its online ‘Publication Hub’, after already spending £4m on improving its online operations.

An interesting footnote to this is that the Central Office of Information is drawing up guidance to help departments evaluate whether their websites are useful, usable and deliver value for money.

This comes in response to a National Audit Office report several years ago which found ‘little improvement’ in the quality of government websites since 2002, noting around a quarter of organisations could not say how much their site cost.   Judging by a number of responses to the Tories’ PQ, many departments and agencies still can’t.  And if costs can’t be measured, can they be managed?  It might finally be time for some answers.

A short while ago I received a phone call from Nick at PSF, who’s asked me to share the very sad and painful news that our friend Jack Pickard passed away over the weekend, following a suspected heart attack.

No doubt like everyone else, I’m really shocked and stunned by the news  - I was in contact with Jack only the other day, and as usual, he was cracking jokes and making me laugh out loud with his wicked sense of humour.

Jack, without question, was one of the most wonderful, funniest, wittiest, coolest, entertaining people I’ve ever met, a fantastic person to work with at PSF and an awesome blogger.  Let’s hope his pages stay online forever and ever.   All in all, an amazing character and truly one in a million.

My thoughts go out to his wife Tracey, his kids, family, all his loved ones.

Thanks Jack for all the inspiration and all the laughs. You’ll be greatly missed, and just as greatly remembered. RIP.

Jack's Facebook page
Jack on Twitter - @thepickards
Jack's blog

So, 2010 has kicked off with a bang, and by bang, I mean possibly the most unfathomable piece of Government ICT policy ever produced. Namely, the latest plans to drag the masses (poor, tired, huddled and anyone else) kicking and screaming into the brave new digital age:  Say hello to the Home Access Scheme.

HAS was launched to great fanfare this week by no greater or lesser personage than Gordon Brown, who first announced this particular pork barrel initiative back in 2008.  The wheeze in question is a £300m plan to hand out  free laptops and broadband to more than a quarter of a million households.  The scheme represents the latest in a long line of government attempts to close the 'digital divide' - a form of social experiment to test whether home access to ICT could improve education, employment and social cohesion.  As Stephen Crowne, Chief Exec of the Government’s schools ICT body Becta, commented at the launch this week:

“The benefits of technology are clear, but it is vital that children are not excluded from access to technology – whether at school or, just as importantly, in the home. The Home Access programme seeks to support this aspiration, by offering this opportunity to more families.”

Which is A Good Thing, except that a) the Government has already spent a significant amount of money on trying to get families online, b) the country is in debt to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds and c) unfortunately the Government’s record on offering ’opportunities’ such as this isn’t exactly pristine. Let’s quickly jog our memories:

Computers Within Reach (2000-1)
A £15m Government pilot initiative, led by David Blunkett, to give 100,000 low-cost, refurbished computers to low-income families in the poorest neighbourhoods. Following a rash of bad publicity and horror-story complaints from those fortunate enough to get a PC, the scheme was shelved in 2001, after reports that the PCs were being sold onto the black market and having delivered only 24,000 computers at a cost of £7.1m.

Wired Up Communities (2000-3)
A £15m Department for Education and Skills initiative which provided new and recycled PCs and internet connections to 12,000 homes in disadvantaged communities.  Months after the launch, the project ran into the first of many difficulties due to logistics, insuring computers and contractual problems with suppliers. A survey of 200 participants found "very few (four)" had changed their employment situation, with only one of them suggesting the WUC technology had contributed to the change.  The DfES subsequently abandoned a national roll-out.

Individual Learning Accounts (2000-1)
A £260m flagship project to provide subsidised adult learning in skills such as ICT, which ran £93m over budget before being suddenly shut down a year later due to widescale criminal fraud.

NHS Direct Kiosks (1999-2005)
Announced by the-then PM Tony Blair, this initiative aimed to extend NHS Direct through 620 touch-screen public information points, positioned in supermarkets, libraries, sport centres, pharmacies and hospital waiting rooms. Only 180 were ever installed, with evaluations putting take-up at 7%. In 2005 NHS Direct scrapped the kiosks to landfill.

Home Computing Initiative (2004-6)
A successful national PC leasing scheme designed to give families the opportunity to access ICT at home.  Suddenly scrapped overnight by Gordon Brown in March 2006 without warning or consultation with industry, resulting in hundreds of job losses across the nascent HCI sector.

Now fast forward to the latest initiative. The Home Access Scheme has been allocated £300m to help around 270,000 families up to 2011, though the original objective, stated back in 2008, was to help one million children.

Denise Athow at ITProPortal has done the math, and her calculations show this works out at £1,111 per unit (or, say, policy intervention), making these altogether rather expensive publicly-funded laptops (and before anyone asks, they're not even Macs.)  Like Mark Taylor, CEO of Sirius Corporation who warned Becta, the Government’s schools ICT body, 2008 about the scheme’s costs back in 2008, Denise reckons a laptop with a year's worth of broadband thrown in doesn't need to cost more than £275 plus VAT and delivery.  A public sector purchasing power fail?

On closer inspection, it appears the  HAS scheme works by giving parents a prepaid payment card, worth up to £528, to use towards the retail cost of a laptop and/or internet access. Thus at least 50% of the £300m budget for HAS is expected to be swallowed up by supplier mark-up, management, administration (HAS is being run by Capita) and consultants‘ fees.

The prospect of this seems to have set off alarm bells at Becta, which in June last year wrote to every English council encouraging them to set up schemes to bulk buy laptops on behalf of parents.  Strangely, only three local authorities  - Durham, Hull and Shropshire - took up the offer.

I'm also indebted to @watfordgap who points out here that the PCs offered by the six HAS 'approved suppliers' are all Microsoft and all new kit.  Whatever happened to the Government's commitment to the open source and Green ICT agendas?

Furthermore, despite the Government presenting this as a ‘free laptops and broadband’ scheme, there’s actually nothing to stop parents buying desktop PCs instead, even though the plan is for children to bring their portable computer into school.

TalkTalk, the Carphone Warehouse ISP, has criticised the scheme as ‘muddled thinking’, highlighting that while trying to encourage disadvantaged families to get online, the Government has decided to introduce a regressive ’Phone tax’ which will hit the poorest families the hardest.

In a further little twist, although Becta regards council support and engagement as important to help families get the most from HAS, it transpires, according to this information note to councils [PDF], there's no cash left in the kitty for this.   'There is no direct funding allocated for the administration or promotion of the scheme', says the note. 'Local authorities will need to look to existing structures to coordinate this work.'

Doubtless To Be Continued...

UPDATE - 14 Jan 2010

The national expansion of the Home Access Scheme followed six-month trials in Oldham and Suffolk, which saw over 11,500 grants and were hailed by Becta as a 'success'.

I tried to track down any evaluation reports or studies published about these pilots. I found none. However in a triumph for Google journalism, I did manage to unearth some interesting findings buried away in the December 2009 issue of Oldham Council's 'New Deal for Communities' newsletter. And I quote:

"Lifelong Learning in Oldham asked the NDC to evaluate the scheme through a questionnaire.... The Oldham evaluation throws up some very positive and valuable statistics, highlights some gaps in existing services, and teaches some valuable lessons for the national scheme."

Namely...

"67% of respondents stated that their whole family are benefitting from using the new computers.
33% state that it is the children who are using the computers.
86% of children whose families received a computer through the scheme stated that the equipment was used by their children to do their homework."

Given the Government's primary objective for HAS is for children to use the PC for homework, this seems to show the scheme has a one-in-7 failure rate. Extrapolting these findings to the national scheme, this suggests nearly 40,000 PCs, costing over £2 million, will not be used for the purpose intended.

£30m

Amount pledged by Gordon Brown to get the most disadvantaged people using the internet.

£30m

Amount slashed from budget for free bus passes for pensioners and disabled people in London.

(With thanks to @idf50 and apologies to Private Eye.)

This will probably come as a bit of a surprise to many, but after four enjoyable, amazing years as Chief Editor of Public Sector Forums, I've decided to go self-employed.  Though I'll no longer be officially employed by PSF, I'll still be contributing on a regular basis - there's zero animosity involved and I'm still great friends with everyone there.

While it's always sad to leave a job you love, I'm also excited. It means I'll now be able to pursue a whole load of Web 2.0 projects and ventures which I've been itching to do for some time.

So what now? I'll be continuing the Public Sector Data Breach log (soon to be revamped – watch this space) which, I have to admit, surprisingly, far from being a source of embarrassment has actually become something of a huge hit with the public sector readership. I've lost count of the  enquiries I've had from government departments and councils wanting to re-use this to promote information security to staff - the thing even gets circulated around HMRC senior management and 22,000 of their staff, so I want to do this justice.  And it'll be open data.

With PSF's blessing, I'm also taking over and building up the UKGovOSS.org open source government social network I set up in August, and running this as an independent project. Though it's now got around 130 members, I need to reinvigorate this community, bring on more of what you could call stakeholders and ensure it's sustainable for the long-term, both financially and user-wise. The reason I set up UKGovOSS was never commercial - it was to act, basically, as a way to help PSF's public sector members just to talk to each other about using open source and meet those who could help them (though, for the record, it turned a profit from Day One and is a great case study of how social media can be readily monetized).  I feel I still haven't even scratched the surface of what I want to do with UKGovOSS and what it's capable of.

As for the other stuff I'm working on, more on that to come - I'll be calling for beta testers for these babies very soon. If you're interested in working with me, ping me at me@iancuddy.com or @iancuddy. Here goes.

While penning an update for Public Sector Forums on the 'Effective Partnership Data Management' project I blogged about recently, I was alerted to the fact that a government review of information sharing legislation around benefits data is currently underway.

Given the public kerfuffle and subsequent climb-down earlier this year over the Coroners Bill, I hunted high and low for press releases, reports, or in fact  anything about this new review. I found nothing, well except for a mention buried away in the latest Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit General Information Bulletin [PDF] from the Department for Work and Pensions to council benefit staff, dated 23 November.

The review, says the bulletin, commenced 'recently' and' was prompted by growing requests from LAs keen to make use of customer data in order to deliver joined up services, or to provide more targeted take up campaigns'. It goes on to say

"The review aims to find out more about the circumstances where sharing data could be beneficial to customers and LAs. What would LAs like to do with customer data if the law allowed it? How far could service delivery be improved? What would customers be happy with in terms of sharing their personal data? We would like to build up a good picture of how customer data could be used to good effect, and how this might impact on LAs and on customers. We would also like to hear about any schemes where LAs have been able to deliver services more effectively by re-using customer data. Are there any models that can be replicated in other areas? Does customer consent work? Are these schemes operating as well as they might, or is the legal framework still proving difficult to work within?"

Councils (or those of the audience who picked on this) have been duly invited to give their input, though the consultation appears to be working to condensed timescales, as the deadline for LAs to respond to DWP is Wednesday, 16 December 2009 (i.e. now two weeks away).  By which time, the final version of the  Government's new IT Strategy will, of course, have already been published.  Unfortunately there's no mention of when the DWP plans to go about asking customers what they think about this. Though if they do, it'll have to be pretty sharpish as according to the bulletin, the Department is due to report the findings of its data sharing review in the New Year.

Now call me old-fashioned, but from a public/citizen point of view, I don't see how I  can possibly follow what's going on with my data any more.

(Latest article for Public Sector Forums.)

A whole year has passed since almost £1 billion of local government money was sucked into a financial black-hole following the collapse of the Icelandic banking system.

So how are things faring with the battle to recoup the cash trapped in frozen Icelandic bank accounts?

Over to the Local Government Association, which has been co-ordinating the efforts of all the 128 UK local authorities who invested £954 million in Iceland (with individual sums ranging from £1m to £50m).

A few weeks ago, to mark the first anniversary of the Icelandic meltdown, the LGA announced some £70m of the £1bn sum had been repaid to councils so far, with 'at least' a further £30m expected by the year end. These initial payments came from the UK-based Heritable and Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander (KSF) banks, which according to government research, together account for around 40% of the total invested by local authorities.

As for the monies tied into the other two failed institutions, Iceland-based Giltnir and Landsbanki, the possible outcomes are more uncertain. The LGA said that councils were 'confident' the banks would have funds to repay councils, but 'were awaiting the conclusion of the winding-up process by the Icelandic authorities'. However it insisted: 'We fully expect that we will get the lion's share of this money back.'

Feeling the Heat

The LGA's announcement came days after it sent an update on the Icelandic situation to the Chief Executives of the affected councils. This including a copy of a letter dated 8 September to Local Government Minister Rosie Winterton, stating that 'while we continue to believe that our members will receive the majority of their deposits back, there remains considerable uncertainty about overall recoveries and timescales'.

In the letter, the LGA warned that government regulations allowing councils to defer the impact of any potential Icelandic losses would not cover budgets for 2010-11, which councils are due to begin work on imminently.  It estimated that according to a recent survey of LGA members, 'overall losses to English authorities would be in the region of £140m'.

While a 'very significant' proportion of this £140m would be absorbed by councils, said the LGA, a 'smaller number' of authorities would face 'significantly difficulty' in budgeting for losses. The minister was informed the LGA research suggested some councils expected losses 'could be as high as 20% of expected revenue expenditure for 2010-11'.

A further development last month came in the form of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy (CIPFA) issuing further guidance indicating a possible reduction in the percentage of Landsbanki loans likely to be recoverable. CIPFA estimated councils would recoup around 80% from Heritable, but advised the amount KSF would be able to repay could be as low as 50%. 

A Chill Wind Blows

Meanwhile the administration and wind-up of Landsbanki and Glitnir continues with, in the case of the latter, the LGA's legal advisers having, it is understood, until 26 November (originally 30 October 2009) to submit claims on behalf of all the councils. The most recent guidance suggests a 100% recovery from Glitnir by March, though some remain skeptical about the likelihood of this.

The outlook appears somewhat less positive for Landsbanki, where councils made the largest amount of Icelandic investments, some £364m.  In May, the forecast for repayment from Landsbanki was scaled down from 95% to 83%.  However, under recently-enforced Icelandic legisation, councils can now claim interest due up to 22 April 2009, with latest legal advice to authorities suggesting they use the Icelandic penalty rate of interest at 22%. This should potentially help to reduce the impact of the reduction by around half.

While the estimated recoveries from Landsbanki and Glitnir are relatively high, the treatment of councils as preferential depositor creditors is considered crucial. PSF has seen documents suggesting that without preferential status, recovery estimates for these two banks could fall to 33% for Landsbanki and 40% for Glitnir.  As the LGA stated in its letter to councils:

'We remain hopeful that whatever option is agreed, it will not ultimately impact on local authorities if preferential creditor status is confirmed. Current information continues to suggest that there are sufficient assets to repay depositors in full.'

Another factor to bear in mind is that debts with Glitnir and Landsbanki have now been translated into Icelandic krona, as at 22 April - when the rate was approximately 191 krona to the pound. As the rate today is around 204.2 krona, this will have an impact on the amount that local authorities will eventually receive. Councils must hope that Icelandic exchange rates continue to move in their favour.

Doubtless to be continued...

We all want digital inclusion - so I was delighted to see the launch this week of the Race Online 2012 campaign by Martha Lane Fox, the Government's Champion for Digital Inclusion.

Of particular note is new research unveiled by the campaign which attempts, possibly for the first time, to quantify the potential financial benefits to the UK ( including government) from achieving greater digital inclusion.  The Economic Case for Digital Inclusion – an independent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers - estimates this to be worth a staggering £22 billion.

One of the 'key findings' highlighted in this report is that:

Government could save at least £900 million a year [their emphasis] in customer contact costs if all digitally excluded adults got online and made just one electronic contact per month.

The actual estimate is some £918m which, by anyone's measure, represents a significant sum of hitherto-unidentified government efficiency savings.  So how did they arrive at this?

According to the report, the figure refers to 'the potential efficiencies that can be derived from switching contacts and transactions to online channels' from more expensive ones.  As the research says, interestingly, in a section headed 'Evidence', 'from the perspective of public service transformation, digital inclusion is primarily an issue of channel strategy and migration.'

The £918m sum, says the report, is based on 'evidence from 19 local authorities' on 'average costs of transactions in different channels' gathered in 2008.

And unfortunately, this is where things start to get a little confused.

It begins on p.47 where an interesting table is provided giving a side-by-side comparison of these relative costs-to-serve. This apparently shows that on average, 'face-to-face' costs a hefty £10.53, 'telephone' £3.39, while 'online' comes in at an amazing 8p.

These are, of course, only one of many, often widely-varying estimates of transaction costs as Mick Phythian documented recently.  PwC could, for instance, just as easily taken figures derived from Socitm's national benchmarking exercise, which sampled far more councils, and were published in March this year and quoted by Martin Greenwood in his presentation a few days ago at the Government 2010 conference.  (Socitm's research, just for reference, put the average cost of servicing face-to-face enquiries at £6.56 and web transactions at £0.27.)

The source of PwC's research is given in a footnote as 'Customer Contact Profiling Report – ESD Toolkit' by 'Aston Campbell Associates 2008'.  Sadly the link given in the report doesn't work, however following some quick Googling I was able to track down this particular research. I believe PwC meant to link to what this PowerPoint presentation from June 2008.

Slide 7 of the presentation, headed 'Channel Costs' indeed shows face-to-face contact costing on average around £10.56. But on closer inspection, it transpires this was just the figure reported by the London Borough of Lambeth, one of the 19 councils surveyed.  Next to this is an entirely different figure from Chorley Borough Council who put the cost at £6.49 - tying in nicely with Socitm's estimate. PwC seem to have chosen to ignore this, which is slightly odd.

The 8p cost for 'online' contact and transactions cited in The Economic Case for Digital inclusion is also a complete mis-reading of the original research.  The 8p doesn't refer to 'online' - it's for contact solely via web forms that are integrated with councils' back-office systems.  In fact, this same presentation highlights that when councils measured the average cost of dealing with email enquiries, this came out at a whopping £6.33.  Which according to the research, makes email actually more expensive than face-to-face contact.

Another rather significant finding of the research, which I failed to find in the PwC report, was that those most likely to be among the 'digitally excluded' were also those least likely to shift channels, which would dampen expectations for potential efficiency savings.

None of this should really come as a surprise to anyone with an interest in customer contact in government, not least PwC as a major provider of consultancy on Transformational Government.  As this landmark UK government study highlighted back in 2006, if electronic services aren't integrated, meaning that councils have to manually re-key electronic data into back-office systems (still extremely common in local government), the true cost of a web transaction can exceed contact by other 'traditional' channels.

Channel shift isn't simply a case of getting people who don't use the web to make electronic contact with government and bingo, efficiency savings. As Bad Science would say, I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

You can download the PwC report here.