Dáil Éireann Debate, Monday - 11 September 2017
1851. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will publish the original business case for the SAFE public services card project that was under development in the early 2000s; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [37883/17]
View answerWhile a single document business case was not produced in the early 2000’s, the Department did endeavour, in as much as was then possible, to set out the constituent elements of a business case in the 2004 and 2005 Memoranda for Government and various associated papers (including the Accourt Study into the PSC and the SAFE Business Requirements).
In his 2015 Report on the Accounts of the Public Services, the C&AG found that elements of a good practice business case were included in several documents examined.
Given the innovative nature of the project and the fact that there weren’t any ready references for comparison purposes, it was not possible in the early stages of the project to determine precise costs and staffing requirements. Accordingly, the Department developed the project in phases and prepared costs and staffing requirements once they became known through these various phases.
The first phase of the project involved the research and design of a card and associated processes. From July 2005 to July 2007 the Department concentrated on the development of the detailed functional specification required for the PSC. It also developed a project proposal for the development and deployment of the PSC and associated infrastructure. This led to a submission in July 2007 to the Department’s Management Board resulting in the Board giving its approval to proceed with the project proposal and with the preparation of a Request for Tender for an outsourced card management service.
The second phase then was to undertake this procurement exercise for a managed services contract for the production of the card. This was completed in 2009 and then provided the Department with definitive costs for this element of the project.
The third phase was the operation of a trial or pilot to test how registration processes and card production facilities would work in practice. Once this was completed it was then possible to determine the staffing levels that would be required to undertake the customer registration processes countrywide. It would not have been possible to determine the staffing requirement in advance of this phase. This was completed in 2011 culminating in the Department’s request for sanction to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in that year.
The fourth phase was implementation which began gradually as resources became available and registration infrastructure was deployed.
I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.
