There has been much debate recently about how government should deal with the fact that its Electronic Service Delivery targets will patently not be met. This piece from Kablenet refers to an IPPR statement that the targets should be scrapped because "the definition of e-government is getting things online and not using technology to address the key public policy problems".

This was partly a response to the Work Foundation's recent SmartGov report that argued usage levels represent better targets than simply putting services online. The report also argued that organisational change, not just electronic change, is required to achieve joined-up government, and urged the government to target uptake for popular services rather than pursue a blanket approach.

The SmartGov report went further to suggest that some users should be compelled to use certain services in order to free up resources elsewhere. This suggestion has been seen as controversial despite the fact that it has been used in other countries to accelerate uptake within the public sector. As my colleague Livio Hughes argued in response to the SmartGov report, this squeamish response to the idea of coercion is at best naive and at worst hypocritical given the extent that government uses its coercive powers to achieve far less worthy objectives.

Update: the Citizen's Advice Bureau, seen as a potentialy valuable intermediary for online services, has published a report entitled Electronic Government Services: Key priorities for the Citizens Advice Service. As Kablenet reports, they feel governmnet could do better in terms of opening up access to online services:

John Wheatley, who is leading the liaison work on e-government, said: "We're disappointed with the speed of progress so far. A lot of services have been developed just to meet targets."

So, in relation to e-government, the question remains: should we have targets? If so, what sort of targets should these be? Finally, how should we achieve these targets if existing promotion and marketing methods do not bring about significant increases in levels of usage?