Written answers

Thursday, 9 September 2021

Photo of Ruairi Ó MurchúRuairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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1293. To ask the Minister for Health if he will outline the Departments involved in the development of the EU Digital Covid Certificate portal; the status of the development process detailing any unexpected delays; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42392/21]

Photo of Stephen DonnellyStephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Implementation of the EU Digital Covid Certificate cuts across several Government departments and agencies, many of whom are involved in related COVID-19 projects, policy and legislative developments which connect with the implementation of the Certificate, for example, the HSE who provide the underlying data, OGCIO who generate and distribute certificates based on this data and the Department of Health who has overseen the establishment and operation of the call-center.

To date over 3.6 million vaccination certificates have been issued by email and post. As additional people become eligible for vaccination certificates, certificates are automatically issued after the second vaccination. The Office of Government Chief Information Office (OGCIO) issues certificates based on underlying data provided by the HSE and private test providers. Of course there are a small percentage of the overall number who have yet to receive their vaccination certificates (less than 0.9 % of all those vaccinated to-date) related to data quality issues. The HSE has multiple data sources for vaccine data (e.g., vaccine portal, GPs, pharmacies, acute settings) and data quality is varied. Extensive data quality work has been undertaken by the HSE to ensure sufficient and fully accurate information is available to support both generation and issuing of the certificate to an individual. The HSE continues to work to resolve outstanding data quality issues in relation to vaccination in the coming weeks.

As decided by Government, the Department of Health has mobilised a DCC contact centre at exceptional pace to manage the required workflows and communications to support citizens who may have queries in relation to Digital COVID Certificates for the purposes of travel. This has required an incredible effort across multiple government agencies to put in place the people, processes and technology required. An interim emergency line was put in place from 13th July in advance of the initial contact service going live on the 19th July given the level of public interest as soon as the first certificates began to issue through OGCIO.

Due to unprecedented demand on the call centre over and above estimates of call centre demand based on an assessment of travel bookings and survey or insights data on travel intentions that Government or industry had access to, several enhancements were accelerated and put in place. The centre ramped up the number of call-handling agents over its initial weeks and stands at 86 agents since the 23rd August. Increased call handling technical capacity was also put in place through a second freephone number on 20th July.

The call centre also introduced new additional service channels through the launch of online portals to provide additional channels to service queries from members of the public. A new online form to request Recovery certificates for eligible persons was released on 22 July. Following this a portal allowing for Vaccine Certificate Request, Vaccine Certificate Details Update and a Vaccine Status portal were launched on the 30th July.

The Call Centre continues to work to improve the service and it is expected that a portal to allow citizens with incomplete citizen or vaccine information to provide this data will be launched very shortly to support the HSE gather outstanding data from members of the public who have yet to receive their certificates due to data quality issues. Once a person’s identity and eligibility have been verified through this portal, a certificate can issue. Development work is also underway introduce webchat and a last portal to cater for certificate applicants for a DCC who are not resident within Ireland but may be resident on the island of Ireland and third countries.

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