Mr. Paul Reid:

One person will oversee all of the ICT capability across all Departments and all the major sectors. We are getting closer to having a single view of what is happening across the entire public and civil service. Second, the Minister brought proposals for an overall ICT strategy to the Cabinet earlier this year and an e-government strategy has been agreed by the Government and published. There has been a great deal of engagement with the industry on that strategy. Third, the Government recently approved a cloud strategy for the future provision of Government services. In essence, that provides a facility for us to consolidate some ICT infrastructure into more single computer centres and single data centres. That will lead to a reduction in the costs associated with the provision of services. It will also allow us to move towards paying for services on demand, or on tap, at some future stage. The cloud strategy allows one to buy what one needs from a private vendor on top as required, rather than buying a bulk architecture and being responsibility for its maintenance. That overarching strategy will enable us to reduce costs, get a wider oversight of the ICT infrastructure and provide more services on-line. Citizens can engage with approximately 400 services on the e-government website. There has been a dramatic improvement in that regard over the last 18 months. This is covered in the plan. It was recently noted in an EU report that Ireland has moved from being capable of providing 37% of services online to being capable of providing 44% of services online. We have moved from being below the average for the 27 EU member states to being above it. There is an overall strategy. A wider view is being taken.

Deputy Fleming asked about shared services earlier. That will be part of our ICT infrastructure in the future. One of the emerging issues in our plan for shared services is the need for multiple releases of similar systems around the various centres. We currently have 18 payroll processing centres on various releases of a single core pay system. If we consolidate them into a shared service, it will allow us to have one platform release and to reduce costs. Our plan involves a combination of wider oversight, the e-government strategy, the ICT strategy and the shared services approach.