The Irish government is investigating how electronic services will change the shape of its public sector over the next 10 years. Earlier this month the European Commission ranked Ireland second only to Sweden in its delivery of online services.
And now the Irish government is looking at long-term changes to the way it delivers services.
Colm Butler, principal officer at the department of the Taoiseach and one of the key architects of the Irish government's e-strategy, told vnunet.com that it was working on a far-reaching strategy for further reorganisation.
"What we are trying to do is explore what a transformed public service would look like," he said.
Butler is currently in discussions with senior civil servants as to what such an organisation would look like. The plan is then to involve IT architects and human resources people, he explained.
"Once you get agreement on the broad vision we will look at what the basic principles of a transformed service will be."
Butler added that he hoped to have agreement on the vision by the end of the year, but admitted it could take Ireland 10 years to get there.
"One of the things that public services don't have is agility," he said, adding that Ireland would focus on services that are worth putting online.
The Revenue Online Service (ROS) is regarded as one of Ireland's successes, reducing the time its takes to get a tax assessment from three months to two days.
Margaret Whelan, ROS programme director, said gaining high-level ministerial support was vital and that projects should be implemented in short, aggressive phases.
Sean Shine, partner at consultancy Accenture, said: "We're a smaller country so it's easier to make decisions because there are few levels. As countries get bigger things get more complicated."
Shine added that Ireland had made some good decisions about its approach to getting services online.
"From a distance it seems the approach in the UK has been to go for 100 per cent availability," he said.
"The targets here haven't been quite so wide-ranging. There's been more of a focus on picking up particular services and focusing on them."
Quelle: vnunet
