The procurement of ICT services is essential to support the Department in providing high quality service to the public in a cost effective and efficient manner. It is governed by EU and national legislation and circulars issued by the Dept. of Finance and the D/PER. The Department actively participates in the initiatives of the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) who have established a range of central framework agreements to cover common goods and services. The Department is committed to facilitating SME access to procurement opportunities and publishes it’s procurement policy on www.welfare.ie/Procurement-Policy.
The total annual expenditure for "IT External Service Provision", "IT Consultancy" and "eGovernment" for the years 2011 to 2019 is set out in the following table.
|
2011
|
2012
|
2013
|
2014
|
2015
|
2016
|
2017
|
2018
|
2019 to date
|
IT External Service Provision
|
€9,103,243
|
€6,540,189
|
€7,623,448
|
€13,653,771
|
€13,736,231
|
€17,910,686
|
€21,554,631
|
€23,708,756
|
€13,416,241
|
IT Consultancy
|
€236,748
|
€307,746
|
€502,030
|
€481,507
|
€0
|
€0
|
€11,808
|
€235,583
|
€5,350
|
eGovernment
|
€630,696
|
€302,248
|
€1,775,737
|
€241,408
|
€3,368,897
|
€4,061,356
|
€7,252,971
|
€12,903,655
|
€5,332,141
|
Increases in recent years are due to the demand for new schemes and services, a major programme of work to migrate existing complex DEASP schemes from legacy technology to more modern platforms to provide greater efficiencies for customers and staff and the development of digital self-service platforms.
Since 2011, a detailed breakdown of annual expenditure for external IT provision and eGovernment is published on http://www.welfare.ie/en/downloads/consultancyitespDSP.pdf
Expenditure incurred on external information technology, including IT consultancy services is closely monitored and services are only engaged for essential work, following a rigorous assessment of need.