Irish e-government services are still only in line with the EU average, despite ambitious plans from the Government to get all suitable services up and running by 2005.
The Comptroller and Auditor General, John Purcell, today described the target of having all public services capable of on-line delivery by 2005 as "clearly unrealistic", and described the roll-out as "average".
The Comptroller and Auditor General, John Purcell
An estimated €420 million has been spent on implementing online service between 2000 and 2005, with many projects coming in over budget, while others have yet to be implemented.
"While Ireland has some on-line transaction services that compare favourably with what has been achieved elsewhere, an EU-wide benchmark survey indicates that it has achieved the highest level of on-line service in only ten of 22 key public services for individual and business users," he said.
"Overall, Ireland's position is around the average for EU member states and some states are delivering a significantly higher level of on-line service. Greater emphasis should be placed on looking at the experiences of other countries and learning from them for application to Irish public services."
Despite some successful implementations of online services, such as Motor Tax and Revenue Online Service, the roll-out of transactional Government services has been slow, with some projects failing to proceed at all.
Plans to provide on-line applications for housing grants, passports, haulage licences, and driving licences were abandoned, with the procedures necessary to authenticate identity cited as the primary factor for the failure.
The report also criticised the Public Services Broker System, which was designed to integrate public services and aid the sharing of data between them. However, the project did not have a budget or a timetable when it was initially set up, and the project was scaled back in 2002, only two years after Government approval for its development was given.
It was originally scheduled for completion in 2004, costing in the region of €14 million, but was delayed until August 2005 with a final cost of €37 million and annual running costs predicted in the region of €14-15 million. However, the report said the system had potential, if it was used.
The Comptroller noted that it was the departments who already had a strong background in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) that received extra funding from the Information Society initiative, which was established in 1999 to to provide financial incentives to achieve certain objectives. The fund paid out more than €57 million for some 176 proposals.
He recommended that future initiatives should concentrate on supporting and strengthening those who were currently falling behind in the provision of e-government services.
The report also found that momentum on e-government had slowed in recent years, particularly as no formal strategy had existed after 2006. However, a new strategy is currently being drawn up by the Department of the Taoiseach.
With the development of any future e-government strategy, the Comptroller recommended that certain factors be taken into account that could impact on the future of e-government, including the capacity to change legal processes, the responsibilities - both statutory and constitutional - of ministers and departments, and the level of resources available.
Labour Party spokeswoman on Communications, Liz McManus, said the report raised "serious questions" over the Government's competence.
"When taken in context of PPARS and the e-voting fiasco, the report doesn't provide great assurance that the Government has learned the necessary hard lessons," she said. "It is clear, that just as we saw with regard to PPARS, there has been a failure to properly plan, properly fund, and properly such projects, which has led to cost overruns and a failure to deliver fully."
Fine Gael's deputy leader and finance spokesman, Richard Bruton, said the report showed that what he described as the Government's "dismal track record" on major projects was continuing.
"Ireland's record in this area is so bad that the EU Commission has already found that, in comparison to other EU States, we fell from first in 2001 to 17th in 2007," he said.
