Fine Gael’s Communications Spokesman, Simon Coveney TD, today (Tuesday) said the OECD has become the latest body to criticise Ireland’s performance on e-Government.
He was speaking in advance of today’s Fine Gael Private Members’ debate on the subject.
“Yesterday’s OECD report criticised the Government for failing to implement over half of the flagship projects in the e-Government strategy, and pointed out that Ireland ranks 17th out of 27 EU countries for online availability of basic Government services.
“The OECD is the latest in a long line of major international and domestic bodies to criticise the Government’s performance on e-Government and rank Ireland poorly for provision of online Government services. The EU Commission called our performance ‘stagnated’ and consistently places us towards the bottom of league tables, most recently 11th out of the EU-15.
“What is especially damning is that these poor rankings are despite the fact that the Government’s spend on public sector IT projects is relatively high by international standards. Research by Kablenet, a leading international consultancy on public services, found that only Sweden, Denmark, the UK and France spend a higher percentage of GDP on public sector IT projects than Ireland, out of 13 leading European economies.
“Of course we already knew from the Comptroller and Auditor General’s January report the scale of the waste in this area, but these statistics confirm our poor performance by international standards.
“By bringing today’s private member’s motion, Fine Gael will be attempting to hold the Government to account for this poor performance, as well as providing a plan for the efficient development of ambitious future e-Government projects that can bring us to the top of international tables.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Fiona McGoldrick
Quelle/Source: IRISHDEV, 30.04.2008
