More than twenty local authorities in England and Wales are planning to try e-voting and e-counting technology in next year’s local government elections. In all sixty-three councils have applied to participate in the May 2003 electoral pilot programme. .The increase in interest in piloting different approaches to the election – and e-pilots in particular – means next year’s programme will be the most extensive so far and could involve almost seven million voters if all the proposed schemes are approved. By comparison pilots which were run in May this year covered around two-and- half-million voters.

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Almost half of the 441 local councils in England, Scotland and Wales believe they will meet the government’s 2005 target date for 100 per cent electronic service delivery. Slightly fewer than four out of every ten authorities are not sure they will meet the deadline and the others say they are concentrating on those services which they think will offer the greatest benefits.The figures have been released today by the Society of IT Management following its survey, ‘IT Trends 2002/3 – Halfway to 2005’ which is based on responses from about 200 heads of ICT in local authorities and about the same number of replies to shorter questionnaires sent to e-champions, heads of social services and local authority IT suppliers.

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By George Boyne, Catherine Farrell, Jennifer Law, Martin Powell and Richard WalkerGovernments across the world are pursuing reform in an effort to improve public services. But have these reforms actually led to improvements in services? The book develops a framework for a theory-based evaluation of reforms, and then uses the framework to assess the impact of new arrangement for public service delivery in the UK. If focuses on shifts in public management towards markets and competition, towards the publication of performance indicators and from larger to smaller organizations.

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