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Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

Answer

Ian Stewart: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what steps he is taking to encourage local authorities to work together in partnership to meet the Government's target for all services to be electronically enabled by 2005. [63770] Mr. Raynsford: We are keen to promote and support local authorities in developing local partnerships with each other, and across the public sector. Such partnerships will be crucial in building services around the needs of citizens and customers, and in realising the economies of scale in terms of the investment requirement to see the objectives of e-government realised. As part of our commitment to spend £350 million over three years to support local government online, we have made provision for £75 million over the next two years to support the development of e-government partnerships. From this amount we intend to provide some £47 million over the next two years to 64 local partnerships that submitted proposals to my Department. Details of the individual allocations will be placed in the Library. We will also provide a £2 million programme of practical support over the next two years, to ensure that these partnerships are successful in achieving their aims and that the lesson learned from them are disseminated. It is our intention to make available the remaining funds (£26 million) for further partnership proposals later in the year. We will accordingly lay a Special Grant report before the House setting out this intention, in the near future.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

63770; 387 c417-8W

Session

2001-02

Subjects

ICT Internet Local government Local government services Partnerships Standards Electronic government

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk