TWENTY senior government officials from China have visited staff at Brent Council's one-stop shop advice centre in Wembley to see how information technology is being used to improve services.

The visit, arranged through Sino-Bridge International, was led by the deputy director general of China's state commission office for public sector reform, Liu Zhenglei. Bernard Diamant, Brent Council's director of corporate services, said: "The concept of e-government is new in China and the delegation particularly wanted to see how they can make a start in this area and the type of services we provide. They wanted to know how we use IT to improve face-to-face and phone-based services."