the corporate environment. Librarians   and their colleagues   will have to measure

their virtual services. As e services grow, librarians managing front line services will

have to balance the relationship between remote service delivery, personal access, and

traditional and non traditional funding. A decline or growth in one area does not have a

reverse effect in another. E services are likely to lead to growth in take up, with the

requirement for budgetary growth. Management information is required to make a case

for this.

The best value performance indicator for e government in the UK is BVPI (Best Value

Performance Indicator) 157, which measures the extent to which e services are provided

against the target of delivering all services electronically by 2005.Local authorities have

been struggling with the interpretation of BVPI 157 since its publication in January

2001. Much of the confusion has arisen over definitions of  electronic services  and the

number of interaction types that need to be measured and tracked.

The new guidelines, which have come about as a result of the initiative of SOCITM s

Best Value Group, reduce the number of interaction types to six generic items. These

capture the core functions of a local authority s interactions with citizens and are

defined as: 

  information provision (e.g., public transport),

  applying for something (e.g., planning permit),

  booking a service (e.g., a squash court or reserving a library book),

  in payments (e.g., council tax),

  out payments (e.g., benefits),

  feedback (e.g., complaints).

All UK local government councils face the challenge of meeting this standard and are

inspected by the Audit Commission to assess their performance.

The Society of ICT Managers (SOCITM) produces a useful annual survey of IT

trends in local government. In the 2001 review,

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SOCITM argues that electronic 

services should be fully researched before their market launch. There is the fear that a

trend will go  electronic  simply in order to meet government targets.

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