Last month, The Irish Times reported that a group was set to review the public sector, and they were to compile some type of report.  No details were provided about this all-powerful group, but presumably they will ensure (through their equally underreported means of review) that public service runs efficiently.  Now that’s going to be a huge report.

I wish this group were a swat team.  Their job?  Replace all those guys napping at their desks with a system that works.  And what should we call this system?  A website [web-sahyt].

You can pay for things online? No way

Let’s start small, shall we?  One of the many public service reforms that the Irish Times reported was the introduction of online payments for various public service applications.  This means that if, for example, your driver’s license was stolen, you could report it, have it approved by the Gardai, receive a provisional license, apply for your replacement license with the Motor Tax office, and pay any necessary fees, all in one go.  As opposed to filling out several forms in several different locations in a kind of Kafka-esque nightmare.  Hopefully you won’t be executed while trying to get a new license in the current system, but you never know.

The time saved with an efficient online payment system is obvious.  The money saved is the salaries of unnecessary workers who used to take care of these processes by hand.  That cash could be put to much better use.  And so could those workers.

We’re not talking about killer robots

People are good, don’t get me wrong.  And there’s nothing like an actual human being answering your specific question.  But if this new system, this new series of websites, could predict those questions, which a good website should, then we wouldn’t need those people.  And we’d all be less frustrated when completing a task involving the public sector.  Now great effort would have to go into building new online engines for the public sector.  We’ve been down poorly planned eGov routes before (eVoting, anyone?).  And what good would it do to bring these procedures online if each website required a staff of 50 to handle angry calls from people who couldn’t use it?

Putting my mockup where my mouth is

With all this in mind, welcome to my new iQ blog series, “Webbin’ for Ireland.”  Each week (or two), I’m going to propose some sites from which the general public could benefit.  Now a good public website would have to be useful, focused, and most of all, necessary.  It seems to me, at the moment, that more than anything, we need a guide to this whole banking mess . . .