The Citizens Advice service spends over a million hours a year dealing with the public’s problems. This experience makes us uniquely qualified to help shape new e-government services, to ensure they deliver what people really need.
Bureaux staff and advisors spend their days solving people’s problems – from debt and benefits to housing and legal issues, and they are a vital interface between government and the people that they serve. In a unique position to act as key intermediaries for citizens to access e-government services, bureaux are keen to work with government in helping to develop, pilot, and deliver them.
As part of Citizens Connect we linked our bureaux up with a high speed private network. This infrastructure will enable us to use e-government services effectively and securely.
The benefits of e-government
E-government is still being developed, but already we are starting to see real benefits:
- instant access to a wide range of information from government departments
- the ability to download, complete and submit various forms online
- electronic communications can save a lot of time, compared to the telephone and the post
- we can give clients a faster, smoother service and take a lot of the frustration out of many processes for them and bureau workers
But people will only use e-government and new technology if it means quicker, better, and easier dealings with government. Service providers need to focus on the wants and needs of citizens, and work closely with organisations such as ours to help ensure that they are met.
E-government – key priorities for the Citizens Advice service
A document has been produced, outlining some of the e-services that Citizens Advice would like to see introduced, along with other general matters that government as a whole needs to address in e-service provision - if services are to be useful to Citizens Advice Bureau clients and advisers.
Pilot e-government projects
Already Citizens Advice is helping e-government to work for both service providers, and the public.
At Woking CAB, authorised staff have access to housing benefit and council tax benefit information about their clients held by the local authority. The council has ODPM (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) funding to make this information easier to access by the bureaux.
A similar project is under way between Uttlesford CAB and Uttlesford council.
e-government kiosks
We ran a pilot with 16 bureaux to evaluate whether assisted self-help for clients accessing selected internet sites is an effective way of providing information.
More information
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