Knowledge Society and eGovernment Policy

Work is ongoing on the development of a new national action plan on the knowledge society, which will be published over the coming months. This third national action plan will succeed Implementing the Information Society in Ireland (1999) and New Connections (2002).

The Information Society Policy Unit (ISPU) in the Department of the Taoiseach has overall responsibility for developing, co-ordinating and driving implementation of the Information Society agenda. Our aim is to ensure that Ireland develops as a fully participative, competitive, knowledge-based Information Society, with all of the benefits that entails.

The ISPU also has specific functional responsibility for the following areas:

• further developing the potential of eGovernment;
• development of an inclusive Knowledge Society;
• management of the Access, Skills and Content (ASC) Initiative;
• the National Payments Conference;
• responding to EU and international reporting requests on the Information Society in Ireland.