Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
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Question 42: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if he will provide a description of the projects that are being funded under the €6.85 million increase in ICT infrastructure spending announced in the 2006 Estimate for his Department. [37129/05]

Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)
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The increase of €6.85 million to which the Deputy refers is related to an increase in the A5 estimates sub-head in the Abridged Estimates Volume or AEV. This provides for the purchase, rental and maintenance of computer equipment and related items, photocopying equipment, other office machinery, printing, binding and stationery services. The major ICT infrastructure projects planned for my Department are as follows. The desktop upgrade project involves the replacement of all remaining visual display units — VDUs or "dumb terminals" with PCs in all my Department's offices nationwide. The Department will then have a standard, centrally managed, desktop configuration for each staff member. This will provide for easier deployment of modern applications to staff. It will also simplify support and training and more efficient use of network facilities. In order to ensure the business continuity, supports the continued development of business processes and provides for the desktop upgrade referred to, it is necessary to replace the equipment which provides and supports the Department's national communications network. The equipment must support the latest security standards and also cater for situations where different types of network traffic require different types of handling such as voice traffic needing prioritisation so as to ensure good quality when travelling through a busy data network. My Department has a number of nationwide administrative regions and headquarter buildings. IP conferencing facilities provide for collaboration and communication through voice, video and document sharing. It is planned to pilot and deploy conferencing facilities both to the desktop and in conference rooms. My Department must migrate to a LAN telephony solution in order to have in place a more flexible, feature-rich, cost-effective and easier-to-manage telephony environment that converges with the data network. This project will put in place facilities to support mobility of staff. For example, staff will be able to operate out of more than one location, yet still be contactable via extension number. It will enable computer telephony integration on future application such as business object model releases and will lead to reduced call charges by carrying more voice traffic on our data network; and computer storage backup solution: computer storage backup is critical to the continuity of our main production and payment systems. The existing backup solution for my Department's data centre has been in place for some time and is in need of replacement on age and capability grounds. The new backup solution to be put in place will overcome existing shortcomings and provide a solution for the longer term.