Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 132: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance if his attention has been drawn to the reports of the complete failure of the Government's e-Government strategy to achieve its targets; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2134/08]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I can only assume that the Deputy is referring to the recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on eGovernment.

It is popular in the media (and indeed in parts of this House) to suggest that this report demonstrates that eGovernment in Ireland has been a failure. Of course the Report does no such thing. While it highlights some difficulties and challenges that have emerged, it also details many successful projects where objectives have been achieved, substantial efficiencies have been gained, and Ireland compares favourably with best international practices. I understand that this Report will be considered by the PAC over the coming months.

eGovernment is not just about technology — it is also about making public services more responsive and efficient by a process of analysis and reform of underlying schemes and processes. It is an ongoing programme as technology develops and as our society increasingly embraces technology. Government services have to be in a position to meet the evolving needs of our citizens, both those who have access to advanced technology and those who do not.

To date, our eGovernment programme has had very notable successes. Examples include –

The Citizens Information, formerly OASIS, website providing comprehensive on-line information on all public services;

Revenue on-line services, which are used by both businesses and PAYE taxpayers to interact on-line with the State on their tax matters;

new services to allow vehicle owners to renew their motor tax on-line;

on-line property registration services which have improved service and greatly reduced the process time;

streamlined birth notification services, which mean that most new mothers are now paid child benefit automatically;

a range of on-line services and systems for farmers including single payments, area aid, animal tagging, etc.;

a range of on-line systems supporting the marine and natural resources industries including licence applications, scientific information, etc.

exam results and school inspection reports on-line; and

eCabinet supporting the business of Government.

Additionally, my own Department has developed and implemented a shared service for online tendering, a shared system for human-resource management, a centralised eEstimates system, and shared voice and data communications infrastructure for the public service.

All of these projects have been successfully completed and have resulted in significant savings, improved processes and efficiencies, and in far more being done with less. For example, the numbers of people in employment and thus with tax records has grown dramatically with no increases in Revenue staff; the changes in child benefit have allowed staff to be redeployed to other areas requiring attention; the shared communications approach has resulted in the region of €25million in savings per annum; the shared eTenders service was the first in Europe to facilitate automatic publishing of tendering opportunities at European level, etc.

Consequently, no objective observer could describe the story of eGovernment in Ireland as one of failure. To do so would be to denigrate the valuable work of those who have delivered the excellent projects I've listed and many others. It would be to set a standard for the public service that in Government ICT projects anything less than unequivocal and total success is failure; a standard that in reality no-one seeking to deliver any ICT project in the public or the private sector could accept.

This is not to say that there haven't been some difficulties and challenges. Some things did take longer than would have been hoped at the outset and some things did cost more than originally expected. But in the main there are detailed and understandable reasons for these things happening.

Looking forward, the provision and integration of full on-line services is extremely complex and care needs to be taken that we do this as cost effectively as possible. We are making reasonable progress and the recent 2008 e-Government Readiness Index produced by the United Nations shows that Ireland is now part of a cluster of countries including countries generally considered progressive in eGovernment such as Austria, Finland, Germany and Singapore.

It's worth remembering that we are dealing here with the novel, in terms of technology and organisational change. There is no easy set of solutions. I think it is clear that the larger Departments and Offices who have already made excellent progress will continue to do that as they have the necessary resources, experience and skills. I think it is also clear that there must now be a greater focus on the small and medium sized public bodies to help them achieve more in terms of delivering on-line services. The public service has already done considerable work in analysing how best to proceed from here. Last year, the Government set up a review of Reach and the Public Services Broker. That review is due in the near future. Additionally, our colleagues in the OECD have been reviewing eGovernment in general as part of their review of the public service. I am satisfied that the combination of recommendations from these reviews coupled with the internal analysis that is being done will help us to determine the most appropriate structures, governance and priorities to ensure the continuing success of our eGovernment programme.