Irish Times journalist John Collins was one of the panel members at the Ireland’s eGovernment Symposium’s lively debate last week. He followed up on Friday with an article, “Time for public service chiefs to get real about smart economy“, calling for a more positive attitude from the public service to developing a stronger and smarter economy – a view shared by Chris Horn, who also addressed the Symposium.

The main point made by Collins was to challenge senior civil servants present at the symposium to “making the case for State agencies to buy more products from indigenous Irish companies”. Collins’ also made indirect reference during the panel discussion to PPARS, the HSE’s payroll and personnel management application. The reaction, in his own words, was:

One of the most senior civil servants present quickly pulled me up and interjected from the floor. “The thing that people forget is that Ppars pays 70,000 people’s salaries every month,” he began before taking issue with my criticism of the project.

To say I was surprised is stating the obvious. I was shocked to my core. Perhaps mentioning Ppars in front of public servants was not a good idea.

This was, however, the beginning of one of the best discussions during the symposium. The dialogue highlighted potential barriers to Ireland’s continued development of a strong online government service.

It became clear that there has to be better communications coming from the public service to the public, the internet business community and journalists. This lack of communications means that those working outside, and even inside the public service, have little insight into the Governments online strategy, the projects that are underway, the vision and related priorities.

This view was reinforced by the results of an eGovernment survey carried out by Elucidate and Ireland’s eGovernment Awards amongst key players in eGovernment in Ireland. The survey showed that 53% want to know more about Ireland’s eGovernment plan and in particular Transforming Public Services.

Interestingly the survey also revealed that one of the perceived key barriers to delivering online services is poor marketing of existing online services.

The Ireland eGovernment Symposium provides one forum for such discussions, but it’s very plain that there’s a need for far more. Considering the central role collaboration will play in continued expansion of better online government services in Ireland, networking and peer-to-peer learning are key. More such events are essential, and possibly, considering the subject matter, it’s even more appropriate and useful that discussion and debate take place online.