Local councils across the land are - with varying degrees of success - embarked on the trail of "e-government", where "e" (so I believe) stands for "electronic". Something of a misnomer in fact because what it really means is the use of computers and telecommunications to improve our own operations, improve services, and make it easier for residents to get information and help from their local authorities (or to give their local authorities a good hiding where that is appropriate!). Basingstoke & Deane is actually doing rather well in this field, ahead of most authorities and - so far - paid for mainly by us taxpayers via the Government, rather than from our council taxes.

This means there are lots of things you can now do very quickly via the Internet rather than through the post or by fax - for example you can check what planning applications are afoot in your neighbourhood. In future it will be possible to look at the details of plans 'online', assuming applicants can be persuaded to submit them in a suitable way. And then you can comment on applications by email, instead of putting pen to paper and paying for the postage. All good stuff.

It also means there are things you can do that were just not possible before. For example, you can watch and listen to a Council meeting or a committee meeting 'on the web' without struggling through wind, rain and traffic to the Council's offices in downtown Basingstoke. And you can check back to see what was said by whom at previous meetings - for example my extensive debate with the council's Cabinet about housing (26th October meeting - http://www.basingstoke.gov.uk/council/webcasts.asp). You would of course need to be really vitally interested - the meeting goes for two and a half hours, with me in the hot seat from about minute 57!

Which brings me to an issue that I believe is now close at hand for Basingstoke & Deane - and other councils that are fairly well down this particular track, namely the challenge of understanding the difference between what can be done technically and what is appropriate socially.

We started to debate this in the closing minutes of a Scrutiny Committee meeting a year ago(6th Jan - also on the webcast page), when the Deputy Leader and officers presented a progress report on e-gov. Webcasting is a case in point. In principle it offers some real advantages. For example the minutes of our meetings are - rightly - terse. They tell you what was discussed and what conclusions were reached, but the webcast gives a much deeper flavour of the arguments put forward, from which you might form a quite different view of who talked sense and who didn't - which position should have won (in your view) as opposed to which did win. But officers have been disappointed by the level of 'take up' - how many people have actually used this webcast view of council business. In our discussion I told them not to be disappointed - it isn't their fault, they aren't doing anything wrong, the problem lies in the difference between what works technically and what's needed socially. In this particular case, very few people will sit through a two hour video in the hope of seeing and hearing something interesting, or waiting for the item of interest to them, only to find it after 110 minutes of other topics. Webcasts will make a lot more sense when we have tuned them better to the social requirements - for example by adding the agenda, so that you can go straight to a particular item. And then by adding bullet points within the longer item so that you can see the flow of the discussion and switch in and out more productively.

Another application hotly debated last year was the idea of providing Internet 'kiosks' (a phone box with Internet) in selected pavement locations round the Borough. The aim was to help people who don't have Internet at home to get access to Council and other "e-services". A good aim, and the again we know it works - technically. But I and many other councillors didn't believe it would work socially - delivering value for the people we want to help. Just imagine the scene: a 'kiosk', open to the elements, in a busy street with passing traffic, and an elderly resident, who has no Internet experience, standing in the kiosk and struggling with some paperwork while trying to complete an online form - having first found his or her way to the form. However good the 'user interface' (sorry about the jargon!), this is not the way to deliver Internet access to the as-yet-unconnected. By dint of boringly extended argument and hard facts (the enthusiasts didn't give in easily) I was able to get this stunt kicked into the long grass. A year later BT (who had promoted to idea to the Council) admitted that it wasn't a goer and started scaling down their own investment in such kiosks.

Until now, the main thrust of our e-gov work has been Government-led. He who pays the piper and all that. But now its time to take a wider and deeper view on "what's right for Basingstoke". Yes, we do need to consider those people who haven't already got ready access to the Internet - they are missing out in many ways, not just in their lack of access to e-gov. But 'kiosks' are a classical supplier's eye view of the requirement. We must start by looking at it from the perspective of that pensioner.