digital government report
Freedom to innovate
Minister of State Ossian Smyth TD (right) with Paul Quinn, Chief Procurement Officer, Office of Government Procurement.
Ireland’s eGovernment policy: Minister of State Ossian Smyth TD As the Government prepares the successor to the eGovernment Strategy 2017–2020, Ciarán Galway speaks with Minister of State with responsibility for Public Procurement and eGovernment, Ossian Smyth TD. eGovernment, as defined by the OECD, is “the use of information and communications technologies, and particularly the internet, to achieve better government”. In other words, eGovernment is less about the technology and more about making the delivery of public services more efficient, user-orientated and transparent. “The public, at this stage, expect that the services that they receive from the Government will be as good and as convenient as the services that they obtain commercially,” Minister Smyth says, adding: “This process has been accelerated by the pandemic and, by necessity, many people have been using online services who would otherwise not have done so.” These services are being developed to meet citizen expectations through the
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use of familiar controls and operations. For example, while motor tax renewal was available online via basic HTML, now this interface is moving towards video and webchat. “It is a more up-todate and normalised way of providing a service that meets expectations. Similarly, the Covid Tracker App looks like any commercial app. It’s intuitive and looks similar to and is as good as any commercial application,” Smyth indicates. Overall, the digital function of government is split across five departments: • the Digital Single Market is the responsibility of Minister of State for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment with responsibility for Trade Promotion, Robert Troy TD; • cybersecurity and communications
networks are the responsibility of Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan TD; • the regulation of social media is the responsibility of Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin TD; • a coordinating digital government function is the responsibility of the Department of the Taoiseach; and • eGovernment is the responsibility of Minister of State with responsibility for Public Procurement and eGovernment, Ossian Smyth TD, within the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Appointed to his current portfolio in July 2020, Ossian Smyth is a computer science graduate and was first elected to
