Our Online Services channel draws together the FCO's current online public services:

Subscribe
By subscribing to the site, you can sign up to receive our email news service. You will receive updates alerting you to news bulletins, speeches and press releases, updated travel advice notices, and changes to other pages on the website. You also need to subscribe in order to take part in our online forums or to complete our online consular registration form.

Public Forums
The FCO’s interactive forum offers you the opportunity to contribute your views on foreign policy related issues.

Online Forms
The FCO is committed to meeting the Prime Minister’s targets for delivery of public services electronically by 2005. This includes enabling the public to access information and services online.

Frequently Asked Questions
Our FAQs section gives you more information about specific areas of the FCO's work, and will point you in the right direction if the FCO cannot deal directly with your enquiry. There are sections on: Consular information; Tracing people; Recruitment; Travel Advice; and Commerce.

Links
Thematically arranged links to websites of organisations and institutions connected with the work of the FCO have their own information services on the World Wide Web. The FCO is committed to meeting the Prime Minister’s targets for delivery of public services electronically (to make all government services available electronically by 2005). Our aim is to transform the FCO from an HQ with outstations into a single on-line global organisation, delivering services and contributing to Government objectives in 190 countries, working in more than 80 languages.

The ICT Strategy consists of three programmes:

1. to improve our Public Services promoting Britain and providing Consular and Visa services;
2. to ensure that we exploit our Knowledge and skills to the full; and
3. to modernise our Management (finance, human resources, procurement) to deliver better value for money.

These three are underpinned by a programme of major investments in infrastructure to link us together globally and with those with whom we need to work.

The main public services delivered by the FCO are:

• public information (including consular travel advice);
• consular services to British citizens overseas; and
• entry clearance (visas) overseas for foreign nationals wishing to visit the UK.

We deliver these services to UK citizens and foreign nationals in almost all countries of the world, from those in which access to the internet (by any means) is more developed and widespread than in the UK, to those in which there are no reliable Internet Service Providers, and in which a tiny proportion of the population have access to PCs, digital television or WAP telephones.

E-diplomacy: the FCO e-Business Strategy  (PDF, 644k)