Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to be here today to present these awards recognising the important work of making public services more accessible to the people.
And I would like to thank both the event organisers, Public Sector Times and Elucidate, and the event sponsors, Eircom Business Solutions, for the invitation.
Technology is now so commonplace in our lives that we can sometimes take it for granted. But the initiatives shortlisted here today show just how great an impact eGovernment projects can have on people’s lives.
There have been a number of great projects that are helping people right across the country. For example, Teagasc’s eProfit Monitor is available to support the 140,000 farms right around the country to better track their finances, and to identify areas for savings and improvement.
The Great Northern Haven project with the Louth County Councils, Dundalk IT and the HSE is combining the best in sensor and healthcare technologies with sustainable housing design to inform how we can deliver better services for older people.
Projects like these set the bar for what can be achieved. And there is huge potential for the public sector to use eGovernment to deliver services in a way that is based on the needs of the user.
For this very reason, eGovernment is at the heart of our plans to reform the public sector and renew the civil service; to make Ireland more business friendly; and to improve how we deliver our health services.
Earlier today, we launched the Action Plan for Jobs 2015. This is the fourth Action Plan. And along with the work we have undertaken to restore the public finances and improve supports for the unemployed we are ahead of schedule in our plan to reverse all the job losses of the economic crisis.
Since we launched the Action Plan for Jobs in 2012 some 80,000 new jobs have been created. This year we are targeting 40,000 new jobs as another step towards our ultimate goal of returning the country to full employment by 2018.
In recognising the importance of ICT and efficient public services to support jobs and growth the 2015 Action Plan for Jobs will see delivery of actions to make it easier for business to engage with public services, the rollout of an integrated licensing application service, and will build on our existing strengths to make Ireland a leader in Europe in the area of Big Data including in the public sector.
Indeed today is quite a significant day for eGovernment and ICT more broadly as we also launched the Public Service ICT Strategy.
The Strategy is based around a number of key principles that will better use ICT systems across the public service while increasing the range of services that can be accessed online.
Over 2015, we will also be working to finalise the Data-Sharing and Governance Bill, which will underpin how data, both personal and general, will be secured and used across the public services.
One point that I think is worth emphasising here is that eGovernment is in no way about removing direct engagement with the public – it is about ensuring that people can access the information and services that they need easily and in a way that works for them. Increasingly this is online.
Taking just one recent example, the Skills2Work web portal which has been extremely successful did not involve the development of new programmes or initiatives. Rather it made it easier for jobseekers and employers to know what existing Government skills initiatives are available for them.
Likewise the Splash initiative from the Environmental Protection Agency, shortlisted for today’s awards, makes it easy for people to find out about all of the public bathing waters around the country in a single location.
The whole concept of eGovernment is to use ICT to improve the quality and efficiency of public services and I think the projects showcased here today exemplify just that.
With that in mind I might move on to the business in hand and announce those projects selected for today’s awards.
ENDS