Why take-up?

I am trying to find out "What makes you click" - that is to say why people choose to drop in or out of e-government, when they clearly are reaping the benefits of e-services in the private sector far more often.

The CLG are promoting take-up, they sponsored a huge campaign "Connect to your council" last year: http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/efficiencybetter/localegovernment/connectyour/

The title of the campaign, albeit being focused mainly on the take-up of local e-servies, is tantalising. Being "connected to you council" is about something much more subtle than just paying your council tax online or applying for a school place for your kid, or even casting your vote online (the e-democracy thing hasn't really kicked off yet, but I wouldn't worry too much about that. E-voting is fairly minor in my books anyway, voting is not what active citizenship is about on a daily and weekly basis, there's much much more we can/should be able to do in our communities).

Being connected to your council (via electronic means) is about the place-shaping agenda [Lyons Review site is archived at: http://www.webarchive.org.uk/pan/15454/20070428/www.lyonsinquiry.org.uk/index.html, LG White Paper can be accessed here: http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/strongprosperous] It's about knowing what's happening in your area, what the Council is doing and could do there - by the click of a finger, or two. It's about the awareness and competencies of local residents, and the Council's role and duty to be transparent, open and (inter)active in neighbourhoods. It's not about gimmicks and tricks, more about building a local presence and hopefully some kind of mutual trust in the long run.

This is why take-up is important, but we must not reduce the meaning of take-up into mere volumetrics and channel cost calculations, as important as these are for the Varney stuff. There is a higher agenda that could be served via locally facing web services.