The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Michael McGrath TD, Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys TD and Minister of State for Public Procurement and eGovernment Ossian Smyth TD, today (Tuesday), welcomed an important milestone for MyGovID – the online service has now achieved 1,000,000 verified users.
MyGovID, a joint initiative by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Social Protection, aims to provide citizens with a safe and secure ‘single sign on’ to their public services in Ireland. It is designed to facilitate a more joined-up Government approach, with more sharing, more reuse and more integration between public bodies. It provides access to a range of public services in Welfare, Revenue, Transport, Education with more coming soon.
Minister McGrath said “MyGovID makes life easier and safer and provides online access to a growing list of key services and benefits, at the user's convenience, and using their preferred device. This has been an invaluable service to our people at a time when the provision of services in a person to person way has proven very difficult. The range of services that can be delivered online grows month by month and now includes a host of welfare benefits, driving licence renewals, revenue tax services, agriculture services and the national childcare scheme”.
“This progress is reflected in the public support for MyGovID; the number of verified accounts has doubled in slightly less than a year, meaning that Ireland is one of the fastest growing countries in the world in terms of uptake of Digital Government Services”.
Minister Humphreys said “The growing numbers of people using the MyGovID service, which is managed by the Department of Social Protection, resulted in a significant increase in the volumes of online transactions in respect of Government online services last year, such as the 2.9 million transactions that were delivered through MyWelfare.ie. My Department looks forward to continuing to work with our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and across the public sector to extend the range of services provided through MyGovID.”
Minister Smyth added “It is essential that we build upon this momentum and enable our people to do even more and we are working closely with our Ministerial colleagues to accelerate the move to and the quality of our online services. “The importance of a strong E-ID system is recognised globally as being essential for the provision of secure and private digital public services. It is our ambition to build upon our growing successes to ensure Ireland maintains its position as one of Europe’s most progressive digital countries”. The Ministers also announced a new service entitled the Digital Postbox.
Minister McGrath said “We work very closely with our fellow Member States in the EU to learn from each other the things that we can do to provide the most efficient and effective digital services. The concept of a Digital Postbox, where individuals can receive their letters, documents, certificates and other messages from Government online, was one of those initiatives that really appealed to us.”
“It’s a project that has many benefits
• For Public bodies, it offers a safe and secure way to communicate with their customers and at the same time reduce costs and paper waste.
• For citizens, it provides an safe and efficient digital option for them, where they can receive messages quickly, get notifications, and then access them from anywhere at anytime
We are delighted to announce that this service is now available and ready for public bodies to begin integrating their services. The project aims to bring about real change and improvements in how we, as Government, deliver public services and communicate with our customers.”
Notes for Editors
With over 2.5 million accounts in total, both basic and verified accounts, MyGovID has facilitated approximately 29 million logins to online Government services to date.
A basic MyGovID account is one where you are registered online but do not have a Public Service Card and have not gone through the SAFE registration process. This allows you to have access to a certain amount of government services which don’t require a higher level of identity verification.
A Verified account is one where you have completed the SAFE registration process, which is the process used by DSP to establish and verify a person’s identity. This will be required when you want to access government services which require a higher level of identity verification.