Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 6, inclusive, together.

I welcome the opportunity to report on the implementation of the e-Cabinet project within my Department. The e-Cabinet system developed by my Department was deployed for use by all Departments in June 2004 and has been working well since. The project has never been about gadgets for Ministers, rather about seeking to achieve a fundamental improvement in the efficiency of the process by which memoranda for Government are prepared, circulated and submitted. Since its initial deployment in 2004, a number of planned enhancements have been added to the system.

There are 5,400 civil servants registered to use the system. Each registered user has access rights appropriate to his or her responsibilities. As an example of the scale of the efficiencies that it has brought, in a 12 month period from November 2004 approximately 25,000 draft documents were securely circulated electronically using the system. Previously, each of these transactions would have involved a printed copy of the document being delivered by hand either within a Department or between Departments. Additional planned features of the system should be fully completed by the end of the year. Those will enable electronic circulation of Government decisions and for the management of briefing for Ministers on the system.

Apart from process benefits, e-Cabinet provides users with timely information on matters coming before Government. For example, Ministers can see the evolving agenda as each item is submitted to the Cabinet secretariat rather than needing to wait for the circulation of a printed agenda on Fridays. Electronic memoranda are presented in a manner that enables key information to be highlighted. These are just some of the qualitative benefits that the system provides.

The total cost of the project will be approximately €5 million, which is comfortably below the initial estimated cost of €6.45 million at 2001 prices identified in the feasibility study that was undertaken in advance of the formal decision to commence the project. That study highlighted the significant benefits that would arise from modernising the Cabinet business process and implementation of such a system. All development was guided by the goal of achieving value for money.

Already, the system, which is the first of its kind to join up the Government decision-making process from beginning to end, has attracted considerable interest from other Governments and international organisations. It was short-listed, along with four other Irish projects, for the prestigious European Commission e-Government Good Practice 2005 Awards, which were presented in Manchester last week. Finally, I want to take this opportunity to commend the Revenue Commissioners on their success in winning one of the awards for their Revenue on-line system.

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