Donegal County Council’s corporate objectives for service delivery to customers envisages making services available through various channels including walk –in offices, over the telephone and self service over the internet. Clearly Information & Communications Technology together with modern client-centred Information Systems have a key role in supporting all elements of this strategy.
The demand for Electronic Government services in particular continues to grow amongst the public and business community in Donegal. During 2002 –2005 the Council implemented a number of e-government services. The E-Planning and E-libraries services in particular have proved very popular as is evidenced by the number of visits which the services receive.
During 2006 –2009 the E-Government suite of products will be expanded.
A newly constructed Donegal County Council website will be launched early in 2006. This site is structured around the needs of the public in terms of dealing with the Council rather than department based as in the past with the emphasis of life events such as building a house, going to college etc.
Preparatory work for new e-government applications is already underway in a number of areas. E-Planning will be extended to provide a comprehensive on-line service for the receipt and determination of planning applications. In addition, on-line bill pay facilities will be extended to cover a wider range of Council services. Electronic Consultation facilities will be provided to encourage public participation in the planning of major strategies and schemes. The potential of web based GIS technologies for additional e-government services is being evaluated given the spatial dimension to much of the Council’s interaction with citizens. Network based SMS messaging services have been introduced within the Council to assist communications with certain employee categories such as road gritting lorry drivers. The I.S. Department will seek to extend the use of these facilities to other user categories as well as members of the public during the period of this plan.
All relevant Council services will be examined with a view to providing as much on-line service delivery as possible in the period 2006 – 2009.
Working in partnership with the Council’s Community & Enterprise Department the Information Systems Department will also lead out on the development of a web portal for County Donegal during the period of the plan with a view to establishing a world class county portal for all information relevant to the county and encourage local communities to come on-line.
Donegal County Council has a keen interest in promoting inter-agency co-operation in order to improve the level of service given to the Donegal public. This is evidenced by the co-location arrangements in place in the various public service centres throughout the county which aims to provide connected government services.
To date there has been considerable co-operation between the Council and various agencies in terms of sharing Information Technology infrastructure and communications systems in the centres. In the period of this plan opportunities for building on this co-operation will be examined within the ambit of the Inter-Agency project. In particular the opportunities for information sharing between agencies in the context of national initiatives such as the Public Services Broker will be examined by the Council and appropriate assistance will be given by the Information Systems Department to these initiatives.