Revenue Online Service: an Irish eGovernment Success Story

Although as a State Ireland has a lot of work to do in the eGovernment sense, with many failure stories such as eVoting and its essentially pathetic online presence with regard to social networking and information sites, the implementation of the Revenue Online Service has been a triumph for the state. Initiated in 2000, The Revenue Online Service has successfully provided Irish businesses with an easy and effective way of administrating all of their revenue related transactions. This has truly been the Irish flagship eGovernment platform.  The Revenue Online Service not only facilitates online transaction and documentation, it also provides features like ordering forms or leaflets online or through text message and mobile apps. This new and effective online tool not only benefits the user, making managing revenue a simple task, it has also provided the government with huge increases of taxation returns since it has been implemented. Unlike the disappointing eVoting initiative, which cost the tax payer millions of euro which failed partly because of the Irish Nations lack of faith in the system, The ROS has been greatly embraced and welcomed. The ROS has not only proved that eGovernment can be a huge success in this country, but also that any failure in eGovernment activity has not been a technology issue, but about a failure of correctly reforming public services. If more initiatives like this are established, Ireland eGovernment will be moving onwards and upwards.

References:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2354424

http://www.revenue.ie/en/press/archive/2005/pr_241105ros.html

http://books.google.ie/books?id=KjALtIPW14AC&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=revenue+online+service+e-government+success&source=bl&ots=k8HY5sVBqx&sig=JRLwxP8eLIN9QkxcSeFpcnZBsOY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9UMrU-qQDYOThQeOtIHIDA&ved=0CEsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=revenue%20online%20service%20e-government%20success&f=false