Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Question 424: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the amount of expenditure on consultancy by her Department in 2006 and 2007; the numbers of consultants engaged by her Department in those years; the names of the consultancy companies awarded contracts; the steps which have been taken to reduce the expenditure on consultancy and the reliance on consultants by her Department in these years and for the future; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42587/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The Department has a major programme of business, organisational and technological change under way to enable it to modernise the services which it provides to its customers. Ensuring that we maximise the potential of Information Technology is a significant aspect of this.

Major IT projects require a high level of specialised technical expertise that often cannot be found within the department. For this reason, the Department has a specific budget provision for IT External Service provision. In 2007, expenditure on this area amounted to €7,084,611. IT External Service Provision is defined by the Department of Finance guidelines as where a person or organisation provides the services or the human/physical resources to meet the ICT needs of a Department. These requirements could include software development, network installation and management; infrastructure management, data centre hosting, managed services etc.

Consultancy is defined in the Department of Finance guidelines as where a person or organisation provides intellectual or knowledge based services (e.g. expert analysis and advice) through delivering reports, studies, assessments, recommendations, proposals etc that contribute to decision or policy making. In 2007, expenditure on consultancy services amounted to €1,013,604. For example, the Department has used external consultancy expertise to support it in undertaking the review of the Social Insurance Fund and the equality review of the Social Welfare Code.

This distinction in the Estimates between IT external service provision and consultancy services was introduced in 2007 to provide greater public clarity as to the nature of expenditure on external IT services and general advice and policy work. In 2006, the total expenditure on both areas was €8,728,000. The Deputy will be interested to know that the 2009 Estimates provision for consultancy services represents a 67% decrease on the 2008 allocation.

The names of the companies awarded contracts for IT External Services Provision and Consultancy Services in 2006 and 2007 are listed in Appendix 1.