Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 15 June 2004
202 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs if all public services provided by his Department that are capable of electronic delivery are available electronically through a single point of contact, as was promised in the joint programme; and if not, if he will make a statement or explanation in respect of each service not yet so provided. [17560/04]
View answerThe electronic delivery of services through a single point of contact is being progressed through the framework of the public services broker and the Reach agency, which reports to the Department of Social and Family Affairs. The Department of Foreign Affairs is working with the Reach agency to offer the Department's services capable of electronic delivery through this single point of contact.
The Reach agency intends to launch the first stage of the public services broker at the end of this month. This will be a public facing website, to be known as reachservices.ie, designed to act as a single point of access to a range of services offered by the Irish public service. Initially, reachservices.ie will provide access in the form of links to forms or on-line services provided on other websites, including those of the Department of Foreign Affairs. It will provide access to information and application forms for up to 900 services at time of launch.
Future releases of the public services broker will include facilities for registration and authentication of customer identity, address validation, the pre-population of forms with previously registered data and an e-payments facility. Another important facility will be the capability for developing and hosting on-line interactive forms which will be offered to Departments and Agencies that are developing on-line services for their customers.
As there are considerable complexities associated with the requirement of customers to provide photographs and signatures in a secure authenticated electronic form, the services delivered by the Department of Foreign Affairs are not easily delivered via electronic channels. The Reach agency has informed the Department that the functionality required to securely accept, authenticate, store and protect the photographs and signatures required for Departmental services will not be available until later releases of the broker.
Pending the delivery by the Reach agency of a fully functional public services broker, the Department is examining the feasibility of making certain passport services available electronically. The Department is considering the feasibility of offering a passport application tracking system and a partial on-line application system over the Internet. Decisions on the feasibility of delivering these services electronically will be made later this year.
