Last September the government produced an e-initiative report outlining three key points that they were to work on and they were:
- Access
- Understanding and
- Trust.

However, this year a new report has been produced with different initiatives thus making it difficult to compare progress that the government had made on the above statements.

What the government had already achieved for their services had been described as somewhat patchy and they now intend to set out what needs to be done to rectify this situation for Electric Government Services for the 21st century.

They have stated that they need to ensure that a competitive government is driven forward by operating in new ways through a range of channels backed up by support and advice, open to all business sectors.

The aims of the government are for:

• All VAT registrations to be created on-line by 2002.
  
• Company registrations on-line by 2002.
  
• Agricultural grants for farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy by December 2002.
  
• UK citizens will be able to renew vehicle tax, driving test, passport and benefits applications by 2005.
  
• File patents by 2005.

There are a number of issues that the government needs to take into consideration before the above can be achieved and they are to:

• Encourage full potential for the government to utilise on-line services.
  
• Open up to service providers in both the public and private sectors.
  
• The need for efficiency savings that can be made by introducing an electronic service delivery to replace and not complement traditional delivery.

It will be interesting to see whether these targets are met over the next five years, or in fact to see additional proposals that may forget or gloss over previous statements as some earlier IT projects have not exactly proven successful in terms of saving money for the government.