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The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Simon Coveney, T.D. today welcomed news that the Online Passport Renewals website has received two UX Awards at the event’s inaugural ceremony on 20 June. The awards celebrate achievement in the Irish user experience sector. The Passport Service won the “Innovation in UX Award” against nine other entries from a wide-range of industries, while the website was also awarded the “Grand Prix Award” for the best overall entry into this year’s competition.

Welcoming the awards, the Tánaiste said:

We are delighted to gain further recognition of the success of the online passport renewal service. Ireland was one of the first countries in the world to undertake the challenge of facilitating the renewal of children’s passports via an online channel. The Passport Service strives to use technology to give its citizens the best possible service anywhere in the world and user experience is always at the forefront of our minds. The awards are a great achievement as the Passport Service was in competition with many deserving entries. We would like to thank everybody involved in the UX Awards for the honour.

The website, which was originally launched in March 2017, was expanded on 28 November 2018 to allow guardians to renew their children’s passports online. The Passport Service received praise for clearly presenting citizens with accessible information and guiding users through a difficult process in a user-friendly manner.

The website has led to significant time and cost savings for both citizens and the Passport Service and is part of a larger programme of reform. The expanded service has experienced significant uptake from the public, with over 66,000 applications for child passports and 264,000 total applications already being received through the online channel in 2019.

All Irish citizens can now renew their passports online from anywhere in the world, with the cohort of adults eligible to apply through the channel also being expanded. In addition, the cost of renewing a passport online is cheaper than alternative methods and the requirement to have photographs witnessed by a member of An Garda Síochána has been removed. The ability to apply for a Passport Card for children has also been introduced.

The two UX Awards follow recognition at the CX Impact Awards and National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) awards, where the website won the “Impact in Digital” and “Plain English in the Digital World” awards respectively.