digital government report
Freedom to innovate
Transforming the future of digital public services Government of Ireland CIO, Barry Lowry, discusses the importance of delivering the building blocks of transformation and the Covid-19 pandemic’s catalytic impact on the use of digital services. In December 2019, the Government issued a public commitment to making digital transformation a priority for the year ahead. Usefully, the Government’s statement also included extensive detail and outlined four major principles of this transformation, namely: 1. appointment of a board member responsible for digitalisation in each department; 2. to ensure the most frequently used services are used digitally rather than simply being available online; 3. to ensure that all digital services have
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the same look and feel, are understandable and easy to use, and use available infrastructure as building blocks; and
which the Government has been utilising for some time now. Progress to date, he asserts, has been underpinned by the driving principle of
4. to ensure that all services are developed in line with best practice, for example, transformational, userdriven, mobile-centric and accessible by all.
enabling people to use government
Responding to a question posed on whether Ireland is ready to transform its digital public services, Lowry says he believes so and points to the digital foundations for digital transformation
of MyGovID from a base of fewer than
services at the time and place of their choosing and a central plank of that principle has been the delivery of MyGovID. Highlighting the growth in use 10,000 accounts five years ago, Lowry indicates that a milestone of over one million verified users was surpassed in February 2021.
