Ireland’s digital governance ranks in OECD top 10
Ireland ranks eighth when comparing to other digital governance across the globe in the 2023 OECD Digital Government Index (DGI).
Despite ranking third as a data-driven public sector and fifth in relation to its digital by design dimension, the State fails to feature in the top 10 regarding two dimensions: Government as a platform and open by default.
The OECD states that the overall best performing countries in the 2023 Digital Government Index include: South Korea; Denmark; United Kingdom; Norway; Australia; Estonia; Columbia; Ireland; France; and Canada.
The index focuses on six “dimensions”. The first dimension, “digital by design” ranks Ireland fifth globally and focuses’ on digital by design measures “efforts to institutionalise digital government in the machinery of government.”
The second dimension, data-driven public sector measures government’s advancements in developing foundations needed to facilitate data access and sharing across the public sector. Ranking third, the OECD suggests this is due to scoring well in strategic approach, policy levers, and implementation.
Ireland’s Government ranks 17th when analysing the digital government as a platform dimension, which focuses on “deployment of common building blocks such as guidelines, tools, data, digital identity and software”. The finding suggests that more work is needed in overseeing the adoption of the Government’s identity in the public sector, and development of digital public infrastructure.
Furthermore, the DGI states that Ireland broadly struggles to fully embrace the open by default dimension, as it ranks 13th overall. Open by default measures “the openness beyond the release of open data”. The OECD recommends that countries would benefit from the development of policy levers, including formal requirements for open government data and stronger monitoring mechanisms.
Ireland ranks ninth when comparing with countries across the world in having a user-driven dimension. This dimension measures “governments’ capacity to place user needs at the core of the design and delivery of public bodies and servants”. Whilst the country ranks in the top 10, recognition in the significance of engaging users in the design of public services and further monitoring of experience of users with public services is needed.
Ireland’s digital government also ranks ninth regarding the proactiveness dimension, which measures “governments’ capacity to anticipate the needs of users and service providers to deliver government services proactively”. The OECD states there is significant room to improve governments’ capacity to better use data and AI to anticipate user needs, design and deliver public services.
What is the DGI?
Comprising of 33 countries, the 2023 OECD Digital Government Index (DGI) aims to present findings which “benchmarks efforts made by governments to establish the foundations necessary for a digital transformation of the public sector that is coherent and human-centred”.
Building on a pilot exercise conducted in 2020, the DGI aims to support comprehensive policy reforms in digital transformation of government to increase government productivity, enhance government services and improve people’s lives.
Achieving a high ranking requires a transformation to enable greater interoperability, integration, and collaboration, within and across sectoral boundaries and levels of government, as well as beyond national borders.
On a general basis, countries globally attain overall results in adopting a strategic approach to digital government, and perform worst taking a monitoring approach, highlighting the need to take concrete actions to focus on effective implementation of digital government policies, to ensure goals are achieved and stakeholders remain accountable.
Commenting on the report in May 2024, Minister for Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform, Paschal Donohoe TD said:
“This is a great result not only for digital teams in government but for the people of Ireland. Our digital transformation is increasing productivity, enhancing services and improving people’s lives. The public rightly hold government digital services to the highest standards of safety, security and ease of use and Ireland scores highly in these areas.”
