Ireland falls behind in ‘Gov 2.0’


21 Sep 2007

A mere 50pc of public services in Ireland are fully available online in comparison with 89pc of our UK counterparts according to the 7th annual report by the European Commission (EC) on the online availability of public services.

This figure of 50pc shows no improvement from the situation a year ago although the EU average has increased to 78pc, bringing our overall ranking down from a position in the upper quarter of EU countries.

However the overall sophistication of our public service portals stands at 78pc which is in line with the EU average, with Austria leading EU online public service sophistication at 90pc.

Ireland’s national portal for both citizens and businesses at www.citizensinformation.ie ranked at the highest level of assessment because the site was gauged as being the ideal starting point for all government-related services as well as having a consistent visual style that made it easy for users to navigate.

The online availability and sophistication of various public services such as car registration and making police reports were ranked by country, with Austria consistently at or near the top.

For online car registration Ireland scored highly, coming in at No. 7, well above the EU average, on the other hand we dropped below the average for both applying for planning permission and doing taxes on the net.

One area in which government e-services performed well across the board in most countries save for Switzerland and Luxembourg, was job search services where the EC found that they offered good quality pre-selected, personalized job searches for users.

By Marie Boran