The Local e-Government Programme ended in April 2006 and recent steps are designed to build upon the e-government infrastructure that is now place across England to help transform local services to better meet citizens' needs and expectations. This is in line with commitments in the 'Communities in Control' White Paper and the cross-cutting Service Transformation Agreement published in October 2007. For example, as part of service transformation activity, Communities and Local Government is currently supporting the sector through its Efficiency and Transformation Capital Fund to develop second generation local authority websites which embrace Web 2.0 features such as social networking and information sharing.
The Take-Up Campaign to encourage more people to use online council services was launched by Communities and Local Government on 8 May 2006. As part of campaign activity, a permanent destination page for local government services through the direct.gov portal has now been established at:
http://campaigns.direct.gov.uk/mycouncil/
This page also supports the Local Directgov application, which takes users from the direct.gov website to the most relevant service page on their local council's website in just four mouse clicks, simply by entering details of their postcode, street, town or local authority name. Communities and Local Government also manages the Home and Community Franchise on the direct.gov portal, which covers a selection of local housing and neighbourhood services.