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According to Accenture's third annual e-government study, "Realising the Vision," 107 of the Irish government's 120 services can be found on-line, giving Ireland a service maturity breadth rating of 89.2 percent, slightly above the global average of 85.8 percent.
The 23 nation study ranked Ireland tenth best for e-government services falling behind Canada, Singapore, the United States, Australia and Denmark, who took the top five spots. Rounding out the list, in the sixth through ninth places were the United Kingdom, Finland, Hong Kong and Germany.
Last year Ireland placed thirteenth in the survey and its movement up the list came in part as result of 33 new services that were put on-line.
Some of the Irish government's initiatives, particularly Web sites that act as portals to groups of government services, drew specific praise from Accenture. In fact Vivenne Jupp, the Dublin-based managing partner for Accenture's global e-government service, commended BASIS, the e-government business service portal, as well as Ireland's "life events" portal geared toward citizens, OASIS.
"Ireland has made sound progress. The central government portal www.irlgov.ie provides a solid platform for the continuing sophistication of government services on-line," Jupp added.
The report also said that Ireland improved from fourth place to second place in Accenture's CRM (Customer Relationship Management) ranking in the report, with a score of 46.8 percent. The consultancy firm said that the FAS Web site (www.fas.ie) achieved the maximum CRM score possible and many other services also scored well.
Accenture deems this figure to be important, due to the fact that e-government is not just about technology; it's also about changing the way governments operate. "A key to successful e-government is the citizen-centric approach of customer relationship management -- treating citizens and businesses like customers by tailoring services to their needs rather than the needs of the agency delivering them," Accenture said.
One of the things about these surveys is that the bar continues to rise," explained Accenture partner Sean Shine, head of government consulting in Ireland. "Just getting services on-line in not enough, you have to ask if those Web sites serve a purpose and if they are easy to use."
Shine said that countries in the top echelon of e-government, such as the US, Canada and Singapore, are rolling out integrated systems whereby government departments communicate with each other and there are single portals for virtually all government services. Moreover, Shine paints a picture of the future of e-government, which offers citizens multiple channels to access services, including Internet, telephone, digital television and even physical locations. Most importantly citizens will be able to expect consistent answers from any of the channels, because all are working through the same core infrastructure.
"The Irish government has the right ideas, but I have always said it's just a question of implementing them," Shine said. "And the bar will continue to move up so it's important that the government keep working to launch new and better services."
Overall, Accenture said that national governments throughout the world have significantly improved their on-line service delivery, increasing the range and sophistication of e-government."
Other results from the survey show that the on-line services gap between leading countries is narrowing, with 13 governments now earning 40 percent or higher scores in overall maturity of on-line services. Last year only two countries scored above 40 percent, Canada and Singapore.
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