British slow to use e-government services. (Up front: news, trends & analysis).

Britain is one of a few nations that has set explicit targets for making all government services available electronically but, much to its chagrin, British citizens are not using them. And worse, usage of e-government services has not grown in the past two years, Steve Marsh of the Office of the e-Envoy told The Economist.

According to a study by the Booz Allen Hamilton research firm, only about 15 percent of British citizens used e-government services in 2001 while Americans (approximately 37 percent), Canadians (45 percent), French (19 percent), Germans (19 percent), Italians (30 percent), and Japanese (18 percent) did so at higher average rates.

In addition, a U.K. official involved in the initiative told The Economist that nothing less than a miracle will be required for the British government to meet its deadline for getting all its services online. So far, about 70 percent of government services can be accessed via the Internet, and that figure is expected to reach only 80 percent by the end of 2005, the date by which everything was supposed to be "e-enabled."

But if they build it will anyone come? Britons clearly use the Internet--online retail sales in Britain cleared 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) for the first time, according to a Forrester survey. And online spending is growing 15 times faster than conventional retail spending. One problem may be the proliferation of Web sites. More than 800 government bodies have spawned more than 3,000 sites, according to the House of Commons public accounts committee. Many transactions require coordination between several organizations and visits to multiple sites. Another annoyance is that some government sites are out of date or not working properly.

E-government targets are now being revised with a new emphasis on the uptake of services rather than just their provision.