The Electronic Introduction in Local Organisations (eLocal) Good Practice is attractive for a number of reasons. Donegal County Council shares the challenge of expanding and improving local government service delivery underpinned by ICT in such a way that a positive impact on the services offered ensues for citizens and businesses.

DCC IS is concerned with increasing the level of services offered electronically to citizens and allowing, as the eLocal model does, for:

-         efficientand effective internal administration processes which generate cultural change in the organisation;

-         efficacy in the use of human and economic resources;

-         improvements in quality of service given and the use of information;

-         transparency on administrative procedures;

-         more accessible services via the online 24/7 model;

-         scalability to expand into a range of business areas yielding increase in public participation

As a strategic initiative, eLocal has a correlation with Donegal County Council’s Information Systems Strategic Plan. It offers another perspective on delivering ICT support for procedures carried out between different levels of local and regional government and citizens with the potential to generate more efficient management, increased response capacity and simplification of inter-administration. It is also noteworthy that eLocal is concerned too with meeting the needs of a territorially disperse population and fits within awider context of modernisation and adapting to social, economic and technological changes.

Participating in the Study Visit to EMCANTA offered the opportunity to get hands on practical knowledge on the steps to implementation, platform and technologies.

Donegal Online Planning System
It isappropriate and useful to take account of an existing good practice already developed and recognised within Donegal County Council. This offers a real time model of how online self-service has been achieved using a combination of technologies. This eGovernment service enables citizens and business to access up-to-date physical planning information via the Internet 24 hours a day using a user friendly map interface. It is the most popular aspect of the Council’s website and, in addition to providing a better service to citizens/business, has resulted in substantial operational efficiencies for the local authority.

Spanish law provides for electronic service delivery as a right. For Donegal County Council, there are statutory provisions for public consultation but not the legislative framework and backing for online services e.g. national identity, digital signature etc. However, it is the fact that Emcanta have embraced or started to deal with the cultural shift and updating of processes to accommodate new delivery methods is attractive in its own right.

Learning outcomes from a review of the Donegal Online Planning System Good Practice are very relevant as it demonstrates how a successful online service has been achieved within the same environment and constraints.