€500,000 State website found to be a 'duplicate'
Friday March 07 2008
A GOVERNMENT website which cost almost €500,000 to set up is being shut down because it duplicated the work of a website financed by the same department.
The reachservices.ie website was supposed to provide comprehensive information on all public services but its work was already being done by the citizensinformation.ie website.
At one stage, it was only receiving 18,000 visitors a year, while the existing websitee citizensinformation.ie was getting 2.5 million visitors.
At the Public Accounts Committee yesterday, the Department of Social and Family Affairs confirmed that the four-year-old website was being shut down.
Fianna Fail TD Brendan Keneally said it had been a "total waste" to have both websites up and running.
The closure of the website was hastened by a highly critical report in January from the Comptroller and Auditor General, which found that it provided "very similar services" to the Citizens Information site, first established in 2001.
System
The reachservices.ie website was originally intended to be a "one-stop shop" for all government services, but the technological system behind it -- known as "Broker" -- failed to live up to expectations.
Although it allows the Revenue to run its online service for PAYE taxpayers and for government departments to share information, its cost has spiralled from €14m to €37m.
However, the Department of the Taoiseach secretary general, Dermot McCarthy, said that although there had been "difficulties and challenges" in delivering IT projects, there also had been successes such as:
l A total of 125,000 hours of time saved annually by members of the public who can apply online for motor tax
l Some €18.5m saved last year by the Revenue due to the public's use of their online service
l Some €25m saved through the use of a Virtual Private Network for public sector employees
Mr McCarthy defended the use of the "Broker" system, which will still continue after the reachservices.ie website is shut down. He described it as a "visionary concept" and a "gold standard" for projects of its type.
Fine Gael committee chairman Bernard Allen said the "Broker" system had been commissioned without a timetable or a budget. Even when this was rectified in 2003, it still ended up costing two-and a-half times the price, he said.
Sceptical
And Labour TD Roisin Shorthall said she was very sceptical when she heard a senior civil servant using terms such as "visionary" and "gold standard" for a project which had gone over-budget.
"Those sorts of terms don't normally cut much ice with the department of finance when it comes to securing funding," she said.
Although the last strategy on E-government was in 2005, a new Knowledge Society Action Plan will be presented to the Government in the coming months.
- Michael Brennan Political Correspondent
