Nearly half of the local authorities in the UK have failed to meet the government's deadline to implement an infrastructure built on solid and secure communications, it has been revealed.

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) revealed that just over 200 out of the 410 councils in the UK were able to meet the compliance tests for the Government Connect programme, which aimed to lock down all connections by March 31st.

Originally, the deadline was announced in July 2008 and agreed to keep 105 local authorities exempt from the regulations, with any others who did not comply being excluded from the database belonging to DWP.

Commenting on the feedback, Government Connect's programme director Philip Littleavon said: "Clearly a number of authorities have underestimated the effort needed to become compliant or hit unexpected issues."

The Government Connect programme aims to bring together major facets of the government into one network, with DWP being joined by Communities and Local Government as well as the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.