The government aims to put some of its services online to achieve more efficiency and accessibility for citizens.

A public consultation is being launched that wants to know which features, supports and services are a priority for the public.

People are asked to tell the government which services they would find most useful to go online first.

Junior Minister at the Department of Communications, Ossian Smyth told On The Record that the government wants to create user-friendly systems.

"Everybody's very used to the idea that there is a nice, simple, consistent easy way of doing it."

"I think people expect the government will deliver their services online as well", he said.

The pandemic has accelerated the process of moving things online, according to Deputy Smyth, and this is only the beginning.

"It makes it more convenient for people and it makes it more efficient, cheaper to deliver the services."

"My job is to speed up digitalisation of government make it easy for you to get what you get online, just as if you were buying clothes."

Green Party Minister of State Ossian Smyth is seen in Dublin city in June 2020. Picture by: Leah Farrell/Rollingnews

Fast track

Deputy Smyth, who has responsibility for Public Procurement and eGovernment, is aiming to rollout the digital versions of the services soon, as he believes more time doesn't necessarily make for better results.

"One thing we learned from the pandemic is that shorter IT projects are way more likely to succeed and deliver better results than ones with a long timeline", he said.

"When we are under pressure to deliver something quickly like, for example, the vaccination rollout system, we got a much better system than if we had a few years to do it."

Listen back to the full conversation here.

Main image shows Ossian Smyth. Picture by: Leah Farrell/Rollingnews