16 June 2000
The award for best use of IT by a public sector organisation went to Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council for its Customer First project, which offers citizens a one-stop shop for local services. This award was supported by Public Finance magazine and was presented by editor Mike Thatcher.
Barnsley Metropolitan Council won the award for the best collaboration solution, Companies House won in the document management category and Surrey Police won the knowledge management award.
The results will help to question the assumption that the public sector is an electronic laggard compared with its private counterparts. Only one of the four categories was targeted at the public sector.
Peter Deane, Microsoft's industry manager for government, said he was delighted. 'What this shows is that in many areas, the public sector is leading the way in on-line technologies,' he said.
'This gives me a huge amount of confidence that not only will the public sector meet the government's target of having all services on-line by 2005, but that the sites themselves will be of the highest standard.'
PFjun2000
