[30.04.2007 first posted on silicon republic]
People often refer to the ‘iceberg’ effect to describe something where a small part is visible above the surface of the water but what’s below is much bigger, yet unseen. It’s an apt metaphor to describe Reach, the Government agency tasked with tying together the diverse public services into what seems to be a single entity as far as the average citizen is concerned.

Set up back in 1999, the agency’s remit is to improve the quality of service to personal and business customers of Government and to develop and deploy the Public Services Broker (PSB) to help agencies achieve that improvement.
According to Seamus O’Farrell, business manager with Reachservices, the PSB is the umbrella name for the service and it has several features. One - the visible part of the iceberg, so to speak - is the portal site, www.reachservices.ie. This is a single point of contact for the public to access around 1,400 public services.
Reachservices also provides the infrastructure for an identity validation service, which allows people to prove who they are when accessing public services such as PAYE, which was introduced by Revenue last year. “When people register with Reachservices.ie, we can provide that authenticated identity to any other service provider,” says O’Farrell.
This service is based on the Personal Public Services (PPS) number and it checks identity online against the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs’ Public Service Identity system. Customers register with Reachservices online and go through a one-off process to ensure their privacy and security is maintained.
So far, around 250,000 people have registered on Reachservices.ie - approximately a quarter of the likely total, according to O’Farrell. “If you take it that there are 2.2 million PAYE taxpayers in the State, around a million of them have internet access. In an ideal world, we’d like all of them to be registered.”
A benefit of being registered is being able to claim tax credits for services like bin charges by means of a text message. This service, along with the entire PAYE online service, is supported by the Reachservices.ie identity set, says O’Farrell. It’s designed to cut out one of the most frustrating parts about dealing with any customer services organisation – when we’re asked to give the same information about ourselves over and over again.
“If we asked people to register and there was no service available to them, there would be no benefit in doing so,” he points out. “Every department that provides a service to the general public would like the option of providing it to them online. We’re going out to agencies and promoting it as an option to them.” As well as in-house evangelising, much of the agency’s work this year will be to grow the number of people registered through the site. That way, when new tax credits are introduced in the next Budget, a significant number of the population will be able to avail of a self-service option to claim money owed.
Reachservice’s remit of more efficient service delivery has several meanings, not all of which are as immediately app-arent as the self-service tax credit facility. For example, the PSB is already used by the Department of Agriculture and Revenue for sharing information on food exports. It’s low-volume, high-value data used by a small number of participants but it ensures a paperless flow of documents using the Inter-Agency Messaging System (IAMS). “Both departments have been front runners,” says O’Farrell.
He points out that there’s a snowball effect – as agencies start to roll out services on the back of the Reachservices Infrastructure, others with a weather eye on developments can see where a similar service might benefit their own departments. “The essence of what we’re doing is building an infrastructure on a ‘build once, use many’ basis,” says O’Farrell.
Illustrating this point, the IAMS will be rolled out later this year by the Department of Justice Courts Service, so that when case verdicts are handed down, the details will be made available instantly and electronically to the gardaí as well as the probation and prison services. “By doing that on an automated basis, this means more gardaí back out on the streets, not doing paperwork,” O’Farrell points out. “It’s not something the public would be aware of, but it’s a real deliverable of Reachservices.”
The system is also at work in other areas. For every new child born in the State, a series of actions kicks in without the need for the usual cumbersome parental paper chase. The notification is sent to the Central Statistics Office as well as the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs so that the new arrival is automatically assigned a new PPS number.. The child benefit allowance for the mother is automatically added.
It’s been a long time coming and progress was slow at times, but now that the infrastructure is in place, these services are starting to see the light of day. Those involved in the Reachservices project say this level of public sector co-operation is unheard of elsewhere and there are no models that can be used as examples. “We’ve cut out a big chunk of red tape in what was a paper-heavy exercise and it means a better service to the public - that’s a good day at the office for us,” O’Farrell concludes.
By Gordon Smith