By using the solution, livestock inspectors are able to use their mobile phones to send reports on livestock figures from anywhere in the country directly to the Department of Agriculture and Food's computers. This makes for more immediate and efficient reporting of figures, Puca claims. Previously inspectors had to manually enter the figures when they returned to their offices.
This was the conclusion of the latest eGovernment Benchmarking Report compiled by IQ Content, which follows up on the first survey carried out early in 2003. The latest report benchmarks 40 Irish and UK e-government sites, to measure their effectiveness from the citizen's perspective.
The NI e-government unit has teamed up with the software developers, local company Texthelp, to provide the "Browsealoud" software to organisations linked to the OnlineNI portal.
A top level expert group is being established to report to Government within six months under the eGovernment initiative to introduce a standardised framework for a Public Service Card (PSC). The aim is to develop a standard for Public Service Cards that acts as a key for access to services, identifying and authenticating individuals as appropriate and where required.
Read more: Ireland: Simple access to public services from the State on the cards
The finding emerged in a survey carried out by the Northern Ireland Local Government Association (NILGA). The details were given at a conference at Craigavon Civic Centre on e-government, the initiative designed to use technology to improve the delivery of public services.