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Information and Communications Technology Issues

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 18 July 2013

Thursday, 18 July 2013

Questions (313)

Catherine Murphy

Question:

313. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Social Protection if she is preparing her Department to adapt to and make maximum use of next generation technologies in information and communications to better enhance the interaction of her Department with the citizen and the internal functioning of her Department; if she intends to conduct a risk analysis in respect of same; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36110/13]

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Written answers

The Department of Social Protection has relied heavily on the effective and extensive use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) over the years and continues to do so. The Department is currently engaged in major transformation programmes to meet Government objectives, for example in relation to activation and supporting the provision of integrated income support and activation services through Intreo to clients of working age. The Department has embarked on a major programme of business and system change to support these objectives and is focussing its development efforts in this regard. The Department requires the effective use of ICT in order to deal with this increasingly broad and complex workload while reliably providing for some 87 million payments to over 2 million recipients per annum and facilitating their engagement with society as a whole.

While not a technology research organisation per se, the Department must continually keep abreast of relevant technological advances and evaluate their potential contribution to realising gains in effectiveness and efficiency. Professional expertise is maintained by staff training, review of technology literature, networking and monitoring industry trends. When a technology or technique appears to have sufficient contribution to warrant further investigation, the Department explores it in more depth. This usually takes the form of an exploratory project to evaluate the technology concerned and/or the processes necessary to take advantage of it while minimising the investment required. One of the objectives of an exploratory project is to identify and mitigate any risks involved, should it be decided to proceed to more widespread deployment.

Once the Department is satisfied that there is sufficient return on the investment required to deploy new technologies, it will generally commence deployment on a pilot basis to ensure that benefits are realisable and, if successful, will follow this with more widespread deployment.

I am satisfied that my Department adapts to, and makes maximum use of, modern information and communications technologies and that any new technologies are explored with due care to maximise investments and to position the Department to deliver on its major transformation programmes.

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