The construction of Ireland's e-government infrastructure is about to reach an important milestone next month as the Public Services Broker (PSB) goes into operation. The PSB is a computer infrastructure project, which will allow government departments to interact both with one another and with the public. The PSB will allow government departments to link up their disparate computer systems, giving citizens an integrated and efficient point of access to government services.
Seamus O'Farrell of Reach.ie, the agency charged with delivery of the PSB, says that the system won't transform government overnight, but will introduce some key improvements to Ireland's e-government capacity.
From the date of its launch, the system will include a single process for the identification and authentication of members of the public and will also include a single payment mechanism for transactions. Citizens will no longer need to prove their identity each time they deal with a government office, such as the Department of Agriculture, passport office or the local authority's motor tax office.
The launch of the PSB should help to shore up Ireland's eroded standing as a world leader in e-government. Last month Cap Gemini, in a report commissioned by the European Commission, placed Ireland fourth in the EU in terms of the sophistication of its online e-government offerings. In 2003 Ireland was placed joint second with Denmark and back in 2001 Ireland was ranked number one.
Evidence of Ireland's relative decline has also been shown in other studies; Accenture's sixth annual e-government survey, which was released earlier this month, shows that Ireland is ranked in joint eleventh place internationally, along with Belgium and Japan. This means that Ireland held the place it enjoyed in 2003, but has slipped one place since 2002.
But Accenture partner Ian Slattery says that our fall in the rankings needs to be placed into context, since the criteria of the survey has changed since last year and that it's difficult to compare the surveys. This year's survey, for example, examined e-government in a broader sense than previous studies, which looked at the range and quality of e-government services.
In terms of the quantity and quality of e-government projects, Ireland has plenty to crow about. The Revenue Online Service (ROS) processed the tax returns of 157,000 self-employed people at Halloween last year, accounting for 53 percent of the total number of people who filed.
Elsewhere, the Department of Social and Family Affairs recently won the Innovation through Technology Award from Inside Government magazine for its Integrating and eEnabling Services project. This service makes it possible to register a child's birth, assign a Personal Public Service Number (PPSN) and set up child benefit payments in a single procedure.
Shay Fitzmaurice, the managing editor of the Public Sector Times, says that the standard of e-government projects has risen hugely in recent years, as demonstrated by the entries to his publication's e-government awards. He points to the Land Registry Office as an example of the transformative powers of e-government. It used to take years for land transfer transactions to be completed, but with 80 percent of its business transferred online, the Land Registry now completes 3,300 business transactions per day via its website.
But that's not where Ireland's e-government challenges lie. Accenture's Slattery points out that Ireland stumbled on the third strand of the e-government survey, which looked at e-government in terms of its ability to provide good customer service.
In order to score highly in this area, governments must do more than simply put their services online. Although 50 percent of the population of Ireland are regular internet users, only 60 percent of those have ever visited a government website.
Coercing people who lack ICT skills into an automated system is not good e-government practice, according to Slattery. In order for e-government to be accepted and successful, it needs to work with people on their own terms. In this context, e-government would mean that people could make a phone call to a civil servant, who would have all of their information to hand, using a PC that's connected to the PSB. People should also be able to have face-to-face meetings with civil servants when they feel that it is necessary.
"I'd be concerned if Ireland was slipping down the rankings and there was no plan to improve, but there is a programme in place," said Slattery.
The fact that the PSB is designed to facilitate phone and face-to-face contact is one good omen for the customer service aspect of e-government, as is the fact that the government plans to provide integrated contact centres to the public.
In the long term however, e-government will mean that the public will increasingly interact with the government through a computer network. To this end the government has been introducing initiatives that will encourage people to go online, such as free computers in public libraries and publicly funded computer training for the elderly. Such initiatives will certainly make e-government a more realistic prospect for everyone.
Autor: Ciaran Buckley
Quelle: ElectricNews, 22.04.2005
