Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The Oireachtas has come on in leaps and bounds in helping Members communicate with the public through technology. It is now much easier, for example, to get a 30-second clip of this meeting or a speech in the Dáil and put it on Facebook or Twitter or however somebody wants to use it. As more of our work is going digital, it is creating obstacles in terms of security, data protection and access to data. We have this year appointed a new person as Government Chief Information Officer. The person in question came from Northern Ireland and did great work up there. I was in Belfast recently and heard all about it first hand. We are facing big challenges in the public service and the challenge will come to us as politicians as well. Decisions will have to be made on the way we want to go. The idea of having the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer is to tie everything together, with one office or person leading or driving it. Very recently, the Government Chief Information Officer got the chief information officers from each Department together as part of building an action plan from the ICT services strategy deployed last year.

We now need an action plan off the back of that for the next three or four years, perhaps up to 2020. It should deal with what we want to do, not just in terms of improving the service here for members as we interact and try to do our jobs but, more importantly, for the public and how they interact with government. We are now seeing a greater possibility and opportunity for the public to engage more not just with politicians but with government and to ensure those engagements are positive. Rather than going to get a driving licence and queuing for three hours, trying to get there on time or having all sorts of difficulties, as we move more government services online, we should make their interactions better and more efficient. We can then get greater buy-in from people because of that, which will help everybody. That is the kind of work they are trying to drive towards.

The chief information officers have had their first session and the follow-up will be in the next couple of weeks. From that, we will build an action plan and I would like to see that started in the autumn. It is very important when it comes to issues like sharing data with the public and making it intelligible for them. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, mentioned all the data and information we have already online as a Government relating to matters like budget, spending and related documentation. I am keen to make that intelligible and accessible for people. We have discussed tax transparency issues before as being suitable for being placed on a website, so people can see exactly and broken down by Department where their money is going in euro and cent. People can then have an informed debate with representatives on the priorities that the Government should focus on with public money.