Tom Kitt (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy is correct. My Department is faced with preparing a new action plan following the OECD and Comptroller and Auditor General reports. I am a member of Government who is committed to bringing about the necessary changes. When an Opposition Deputy has constructive ideas it is my duty to examine them. We have been talking and we will see how we get on tomorrow.

This is a sound parliamentary initiative. I would like to highlight, as I did earlier during exchanges with Deputy Quinn's party colleague at Question Time, positive e-Government initiatives. Many fantastic people work hard in Departments on e-Government. Parts of the system are not working and the ongoing peer review by the Department of Finance over the past two years is a good mechanism to ensure better performance all round. The OECD report presents a fantastic opportunity to all of us to move on. We are preparing an action plan and will have it ready in July

I pay tribute to the many public servants who have worked in the public interest to break new ground and disrupt the cultures and, in some cases, the traditions of their organisations to modernise their services and to make it easier for the people they serve on the front line obtain the level of service they expect and to which they are entitled as citizens. Simply counting the things that can be easily counted, focussing on the numbers and taking a pedantic view of what is very often a nebulous phenomenon, thereby being obsessed with the empirical while ignoring the aesthetic, can give a totally misleading picture. It can also distort the results and, ultimately, lead to unsound decisions. In that regard, I refer to comments by the Comptroller and Auditor General at the Committee of Public Accounts hearing last month when he acknowledged the many successes in e-Government and that he did not want to be negative.

It is worth reflecting on the progress of e-Government over this decade, how it has evolved and how it has changed in significance and importance. In Ireland, as elsewhere , there was a strong momentum towards the creation of an information society, which was building during the 1990s as the Internet emerged and as universal access to information brought us into this information age. It was recognised, however, quite a number of people were in danger of being left behind on the wrong side of the digital divide if they were not encouraged or facilitated to gain access. It was also recognised that a key driver of access was content, something that would give an incentive to people to get on-line. One obvious source of content for governments tackling the digital divide is their own public services. In Ireland we promoted e-Government, primarily to encourage participation in and engagement with the information society by as many people as possible.

The modernisation process has been under way since 1994, having been initiated by the then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, and while it envisaged the use of technology where appropriate, it did not envisage e-Government as an end in itself. In the early part of this decade the focus of those promoting e-Government was mainly to create more opportunities for access and engagement so that more people would have a good reason to get involved and be participants in the emerging information society. That initial thrust started to change as experience showed that to simply put services on-line without a reason, other than simply to have them on-line, was, ultimately, wasteful or at least short-sighted. Many countries found that they had services on-line that were not being used and the cost of putting them on-line was not justified by the level of use.

Public administration involves many activities in addition to service delivery. At a high level, there are two primary activities: policy making and policy implementation. However, behind them, there are many activities in managing the service delivery process, in internal administration and in policy making, areas where people are performing to achieve results and outcomes. In all these activities there is scope to innovate using technology. E-Government, therefore, has to be seen in a different light as an enabler of change, modernisation and transformation but with a purpose to improve performance for better outcomes and impacts. In that respect it is very much in harmony with the modernisation process.

In Ireland, as elsewhere, the emphasis has shifted to using technology to enhance performance. While that includes service delivery, it also includes the other aspects of the work of governments I mentioned. However, even taking service delivery and creating a new channel of access, while welcome, does not go far enough. We also need to examine how technology can improve the nature and operation of the relationships between citizens and the many parts of the public service with which they have to interact. We have to re-examine why we do what we do and how we do it and to consider it in a wider context. We must consider where others may address aspects of the same situation or predicament and see can the tools at our disposal change things for the better.

One of the unfortunate aspects of the coverage of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report in some media was the treatment of projects deemed to be over budget, delayed or abandoned altogether. It is important that we are clear about the tremendous success we have witnessed in e-Government. A long list of projects have delivered what they were supposed to and, in some cases, even more. The Government virtual private network ensured substantial savings of €25 million per annum. The Revenue on-line service, about which everybody is talking, has delivered estimated savings of €49 million, in addition to the increased capacity of Revenue to deal with twice as many taxpayers with the same number of staff. In the case of motor tax on-line, it is estimated at least 125,000 hours are saved annually. E-Cabinet is another example of the innovative use of technology to improve efficiency. It has streamlined processes across all Departments for the submission of papers to the Cabinet. The civil registration modernisation programme has achieved annual savings of approximately €7.6 million. Jobs Ireland at FÁS has facilitated an annual saving of approximately €1.9 million while the animal health computer system has yielded estimated annual savings of €13 million. I am glad my colleague, Deputy Mary Wallace, is present to contribute to the debate. These are a sample of the very impressive results from the prudent use of technology in contexts where there was a very tangible improvement in performance. There are many more stories like this and the number will increase as more public service agencies exploit the new and emerging technologies in what they do.

Some commentators have made great play of the assertions that there were cost overruns. It is important to bear in mind that many projects change in nature after work has commenced on them. This can arise for a number of reasons, including unexpected problems with design, the addition of new elements or a change in requirements or, as can often happen where new ground is being broken, unforeseen issues and obstacles that can add costs. While there are cost overruns, it is important to examine each case prior to jumping to adventurous conclusions or damning everybody. In many procurement situations the costs do not become apparent until the tender documents have been received and discussions and clarifications have been completed between the vendor and the purchaser. Quite often the revelation about the true cost can cause projects to be postponed or even abandoned when the estimated return in terms of benefits is weighed against the cost. It is prudent for project sponsors to conduct this exercise and it is madness to criticise those who take that approach. The alternative of "finishing because you've started" would be reckless in the extreme unless that was the least costly path to follow. In addition, of the 23 projects listed in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, which covered the period up to 2005, many have proceeded while only a handful have been postponed or deferred altogether. In these latter cases, there were good reasons for the decisions that should be commended.

A number of people have latched on to the various benchmarking results that show where Ireland ranks relative to other countries. Ireland's performance in the Capgemini benchmarking exercises conducted on behalf of the EU Commission has slipped from first in 2001 and 2002 to 17th in 2007. However, at the same time, Ireland's grading by Capgemini improved from 68% in 2002 to 84% in 2006. This shows we are still progressing but others are coming from behind learning from the early movers and starting afresh in the light of our experience.

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