Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 11 June 2013
383. Deputy Willie O'Dea asked the Minister for Social Protection the projected cost of the full roll-out of the public services card, the way this has varied since the project was initiated, the number of PSCs issued to date, the projected number to be issued in 2013, the schemes that will be prioritised in the roll-out; the date for completion of the scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27132/13]
View answerThe Department of Social Protection has developed, in conjunction with a number of other Government Departments, a rules based standard for establishing and authenticating an individual’s identity for the purposes of access to public services.
This programme of work, which is known as Standard Authentication Framework Environment, or SAFE for short, also provided for the introduction of a Public Services Card (PSC) to enable individuals to gain access to public services more efficiently and with a minimum of duplication of effort, while at the same time preserving their privacy to the maximum extent possible.
There are 4 main sub-programmes to the PSC Project:
1. PSC design and delivery: The projects to design, develop and deliver the PSC along with the capability to issue, interact with, manage and provide customer support for the card,
2. SAFE Registration development: The projects to develop and deliver the SAFE registration business processes and the ICT systems within the Department to support them and generate PSC requests,
3. DSP Deployment: The projects to deploy the functionality in the Department’s offices, register clients and issue cards to them, and
4. Future use: Projects to oversee the future development and use of the PSC and its infrastructure, including possible use for on-line and financial services both internally and in other public service bodies.
The first two programmes of work are complete with respect to the standard PSC. The Department is also engaged in a project to produce a Free Travel variant of the PSC compatible with the Department of Transport’s Integrated Ticketing System as well as a variant suitable for issue to juveniles. The projected cost of these programmes was some €24M (VAT excl.) There is no reason to believe that these estimates will be exceeded.
With regard to the third programme – DSP deployment: In Spring 2012, following a pilot deployment of registration, sanction was received from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform for 150 additional temporary staff to support customer registration and card roll-out. From that time, sourcing of these additional staff began and volume production of standard PSCs commenced in July 2012. The estimated cost associated with these staff in terms of salaries and training over the lifetime of the project is €10.9M.
Since then, the accelerated roll-out of SAFE Registration functionality across the country has continued. The Department has deployed two methods for SAFE registration – a ‘reduced process’ utilising data from other State agencies (e.g. data provided in the context of a Passport application) and a ‘face to face’ process involving personal attendance at a DSP Office.
To date, almost 240,000 PSCs have been issued. These cards have been issued, in the main, to people in receipt of Jobseekers payments and One Parent Family Payments from the Department and to applicants for Personal Public Service numbers. The projected number of cards to issue in 2013 is 600,000. The number of PSCs to be produced from 2013 onwards will be significantly increased. SAFE registration will be expanded to encompass all Departmental scheme customers as well as customers of other public sector organisations and across the general population of Ireland. In that context the Department is engaged with a number of other Public Service bodies about the use of the SAFE/PSC infrastructure in the delivery of services. The initial Public Services Card Roll Out project has a completion date of 31st December 2016.
