The governmental department was awarded the prize in recognition of its success in utilising electronic services. The Land Registry Office now completes 3,300 business transactions per day via its website. In 2004 the government department's site completed 769,000 transactions via the site and has seen more than 2 million paid transactions carried out since it was first launched. The Land Registry Office also picked up a "Best Central eGovernment" honour at the awards. "This highly prestigious recognition is the culmination of many years of planning and implementation involving a collaborative approach, which included our staff, our customers and other stakeholders and our technology partners," said a statement from the Land Registry Office. "We are pleased, in particular, that the judging panel considered that our organisation has 'demonstrated outstanding commitment and innovation' in its approach to implementing eGovernment services in Ireland."
The Irish eGovernment Awards 2005 which were co-hosted by The Public Sector Times and the online communications and marketing agency, Elucidate, which also dished out awards to a number of other government departments. These included the National Concert Hall which was awarded the "Best Commercial eGovernment" award, Kildare County Council which picked up the prize for "Best Local eGovernment" and the Courts Service who won the best "State Body eGovernment" category.
Other winners on the night included Assist Ireland and Comhairle who picked up the "Best Accessible eGovernment" award and the Office Health Management (OHM), North Western Area (NWA) and Health Executive Board (HeBE) which were jointly awarded the best "Health Sector eGovernment" award.
"The speed at which people are getting used to dealing with government online is phenomenal," said Minister of state Tom Kitt speaking at the awards presentation. "For example, 53 percent of the self-employed, a total of 157,000 people, made returns online to the Revenue Commissioners in one month. This means that 157,000 large paper tax returns have been eliminated from the system. A huge paper mountain has been removed in one stroke from both customers and the Revenue Commissioner. The Revenue Commissioners receive 20,000 online enquires a day and what I found even more amazing is that there are 3,000 hits a day on weekends."
"The public sector continues to play a significant role in determining the country's economic efficiency and competitiveness -- in portraying Ireland as a place that leads in the use of technology -- a place that is setting trends. To maintain that image of progressiveness, the public sector needs to embrace innovation in all facets of its activities," Minister Kitt added.
Autor: Charlie Taylor
Quelle: ElectricNews, 17.02.2005
