Marked differences in the stages Europe's various national administrations have reached in moving towards e-government are highlighted in a new report from ICL.

Although the majority of European governments believed that the offering of services via the Internet will result in future savings, none could offer timescales or a plan for when and how these savings would be achieved. The report from the leading e-business services company also draws attention to the lack of planning European governments have put in place for the changes that delivering services on-line will entail. None of the governments interviewed for the report, "Europe's readiness for e-government", had developed full change management plans that revealed how they aimed to restructure and redistribute their resources. ICL called on European governments to fully consider the costs and savings of e-government in light of its report and to ensure that e-government strategies are supported by effective change management plans. The report examines the e-government targets set in the EU's e-Europe 2002 action plan, and looks at how each country is progressing towards reaching the targets set for electronic service delivery. It highlights initiatives that are already taking place around Europe in the move to e-government. Finland, for example, has launched 76 e-service projects and is confident it enjoys "big" cost savings, whilst other initiatives include the UK's heavily used open.gov.uk information portal (http://www.open.gov.uk/) and Greece's on-line tax forms. But "ICL believes that too many of the benefits are seen as isolated initiatives and that integrated, properly costed plans for the move to on-line government are lacking," said George Hall, director of corporate affairs at ICL.