Despite the financial and competitive advantages of offering government services via the internet, even those countries that have advanced the furthest down the path to e-government transact relatively little business digitally, according to a new global study by Andersen Consulting, the management and technology consultancy. The leaders include the United States, Singapore, Australia and Canada - but not the UK.

The report claims that more than 90 percent of the various services national governments offer that could be transacted over the internet are not handled electronically. Even the five leading governments in the study achieved only 20% of their capacity to provide on-line service delivery. The reasons for this include concerns about privacy, cost and the complexity of migrating from legacy systems to the electronic environment.

Only half of countries examined transact any government-to-citizen or government-to-business services on-line.

Andersen Consulting defines e-government as applying e-commerce tools and techniques to the business of governing to benefit government stakeholders, including individuals, businesses and government itself. To determine the progress of e-government worldwide, Andersen Consulting studied 20 governments including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, the US and the UK.

The study found that, to date, governments are generally stuck at the earliest stage - using the internet to disseminate information and have made only limited progress in interacting with citizens over the Internet and transacting business, according to the report.

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