Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important question. Efforts aimed at reducing the amount of paper-based processes in the public service have been under way for a number of years. As the Deputy will be aware, the Government approved the ICT strategy for the public service earlier in the year. The strategy has five key strategic objectives which set the future direction for innovation and excellence in ICT in public service. In line with the public service reform plan, the focus of the strategy will be to enable delivery of better outcomes for citizens and businesses. The focus of the digital first stream of the strategy is the digitisation of key transactional services and the increased use of ICT to deliver improved efficiency. My Department is working with other public service bodies to identify candidate projects to drive innovation in the delivery of services. One outcome of these initiatives will be to remove paper from the process. In addition, my Department is working with public service bodies to support innovation in the use of data to enable delivery of integrated services and improve decision-making, openness and transparency. These innovations will contribute to reducing paper-based processes in the public administration.

My Department is making major strides towards a paperless working environment. We have introduced a system for electronic processing of parliamentary questions which has cut down on a huge amount of paperwork. This is complemented by an e-submissions system which encompasses submissions to myself and to senior management in the Department. Measures like this will also be foundation blocks for my Department's move to an electronic documents system which will ultimately see the fading away of paper files. This greater use of electronic work processes will also assist policy-making and research and retrieval for both archival and freedom of information purposes.

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