On 7 May 2009 the National Audit Office (NAO) has published a report on information exchange in benefits delivery: Department for Work and Pensions: Communicating with Customers, produced by a joint OII-LSE research team led by Professors Helen Margetts (OII) and Patrick Dunleavy (LSE).

The report found that while the Department has significantly changed the way in which it provides information in recent years, with a growth in the use of telephone and the Internet, there is still progress to be made in moving services online.

Professor Patrick Dunleavy, chair of LSE's Public Policy Group, said: "This new report also shows that recently there has been a strong take-up of DWP's online facilities for claiming JobSeekers' Allowance, and that the Department is now moving rapidly to begin communicating with more of its customers online."

Members of our research team are involved in a number of research projects relating to Government on the Web, involving other universities and private sector partners and sponsored by the National Audit Office, research councils, the European Commission, private companies and charitable bodies.
The projects have for example resulted in two books: the recent "Digital Era Governance" and the upcoming "The Tools of Government in the Digital Age".
Other projects include the setup of an experimental laboratory for the Social Sciences in Oxford (OXlab) including a database with currently more than 1.500 participants.

The UK's National Audit Office (NAO) has commissioned us to carry out several Value For Money studies on their behalf to survey online delivery of UK public services.
Coming up in July 2007 is the latest Government on the Internet report which evaluates progress in delivering UK government services online. The upcoming study is the third in the series that started with Government on the Web (in 1999) and Government on the Web II (2002). Other reports for the National Audit Office have looked at how to achieve innovation in public services, citizen redress options and the design of government administrative forms.