A report by the European Commission has ranked the UK one place higher than last year in terms of online public services.

The UK was rated fifth best in Europe for sophistication and availability in the study carried out by CapGemini, up from sixth last year.

CapGemini found that 89 per cent of basic public services in the UK are fully available online.

"This shows a marked improvement over 2006," said the Benchmarking the Supply of Online Public Services report. "Online sophistication of public services scores 90 per cent."

The study found that the level of sophistication for services aimed at citizens is almost as developed as those targeting businesses.

"The majority of public services for citizens are accessible through the national portal," the CapGemini report said.

"DirectGov and Business Link are best practices in the domain of personalised, targeted gateways to public service delivery."

Of the newer EU member states, Malta, Slovenia and Estonia were singled out for praise as having embraced e-government and achieved high levels of online service delivery.

The report found that Europe as a whole continued to progress in e-government, and that 'online sophistication' had reached an average 76 per cent.

"Europe continues to make sound progress on the supply of online public services as a key enabler to deliver the i2010 e-government action plan," the report said.

However, there is still a lot to do to serve increasingly web-literate citizens.

"Today's challenge is to close that gap and deliver an experience that attracts and fulfils citizens' needs efficiently, consistently and economically, " the report said.

Ireland fared less well in the study with only 50 per cent of the country's public services available online.