The selection of BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting) was widely expected after Reach, the government agency responsible for the new system, named BearingPoint its preferred supplier late last year. The announcement also included a full list of companies involved in the important contract: Esat BT, for infrastructure management outsourcing, as well as BEA, Netegrity, Oracle and Sun Microsystems for technology. BearingPoint, which is also building a EUR22 million system that will let Irish citizens order passports on-line, beat out three other contenders for the PSB contract: Accenture, HP Services Consulting & Integration and Siemens Business Services. The value of the PSB tender has not been revealed, but construction of the first phase of the multi-phase project was rumoured to be worth about EUR15 million.
"As the Reach initiative aims to dramatically improve the quality of services provided across the Irish Public Service, it was imperative that we chose the right team," commented Oliver Ryan, director of Reach. "After an exhaustive procurement process, we selected BearingPoint as our key development collaborator as they had all the attributes necessary for success."
When completed, the Public Services Broker -- which is also now called reachservices -- will serve as a kind of central nervous system for Irish e-government services, linking practically all government departments and agencies so that information on citizens can be shared. Once in place, citizens will be able to, for example, sign up for multiple social services such as child benefit, unemployment assistance and rent allowance at the same time on a single Web site. The challenge in making this happen so far has been the inability of various government departments to automatically share data with one another.
The PSB will link all public services by means of citizens' PPSN numbers, which under the Social Welfare Act of 1998 are already used to deliver improved customer service in government. With both PPSN numbers and the PSB in place, the government argues that it will soon be able to create enormous efficiencies within government and the civil service.
Ironically, the awarding of the PSB contract has itself been a drawn-out and seemingly highly inefficient affair, held back by technical problems and recommendations from the Department of Finance that early proposals for the system be overhauled. Such roadblocks have had a knock-on effect on other e-government services. After Reach was created in 2000, it was expected that the awarding of the PSB contact would be completed in late 2002 or early 2003 at the latest, with the first phase of the rollout in place by mid-2003.
A spokesperson for Reach was unavailable, but in its last update the company said that it was aiming to have phase one completed by June 2004, just over two months from now.
Quelle: Electric News, 21.04.2004
