Election offers chance to plug the glaring leadership gap on national digital policy

Now is the time for the Government to start thinking seriously about creating either a new ministry dedicated to the whole digital agenda, from infrastructure through to e-government and e-commerce, or a sub-ministerial position similar to Britain's e-envoy. Or ideally, a mix of both.

This is hardly a brand new idea but one whose time has come. Already there has been talk of splintering off the communications portfolio (which includes telecommunications) from the Department of Public Enterprise. With transport also among its responsibilities, this is easily the Government department with the largest and broadest brief. Some within and outside Government feel communications needs a dedicated team.

But creating a separate communications division is too narrow an option on its own, although it might be considered as part of an overall strategy.

Although the construction of an adequate telecommunications infrastructure has moved up the State's agenda, and the importance of the internet to the social and economic life of the country is more widely understood, simply slicing communications off the side of the Department does not address the urgent need for broad, interdepartmental co-ordination and leadership.

The reasons for creating a new e-envoy or e-minister role, with new responsibilities, are many. Simply in terms of re-organisation, the coming election offers an opportunity for a fresh approach to a complex area that overlaps into several departments (as far as directly relevant projects go) and into all departments (in that none remains untouched by the internet's influence and all must eventually push their services online).

So an election might facilitate the process. However, this is more than a potential election issue.

The State is very clearly at a crossroads regarding its approach to all things digital. Until now, all the bits and pieces that fall under that heading - from the construction of networks to the funding of research, to the pursuit of inward investment, to e-government services, to the revamping of the education curriculum - could be dealt with piecemeal. In some departments, such matters are minor - too minor, a cynic might note - while in others, such as Public Enterprise, they represent huge chunks of policy and procurement.

Now, the boundaries between all these elements are growing ever more blurred.

Increasingly, the more astute politicians and civil servants see them as part of a comprehensive whole - inter-related elements whose individual success depends on what happens in other departments and across other sectors.

Yet we have no single person co-ordinating such efforts, no attempt to forge a national policy, no drive to unify efforts across departments, no clear game plan, no vision of where we are going.

No one minister, nor the Taoiseach, can offer more than issue- by-issue responses to the growing questions about how and why we are building out broadband networks, what kind of industry the State wishes to underpin the economy with, how our educational system will flex to encourage understanding and expertise in digital-era subjects, and how e-government will serve its citizens.

A unified approach across Government is clearly lacking; one has only to meet civil servants from various divisions to realise that one department often has little or no idea what other departments are working on in this area. Don't get me wrong: much good, hard work is being done by many departments and, in particular, by many individual civil servants who have real commitment and energy.

But they are all working without any clear vision from the top - because there is no top. At best, there might be a departmental goal and that in turn might be linked to a general and vague national goal - promoting e-government, for example. What this translates to is confusion. There is no road map.

This situation has potentially serious consequences for the State's ability to remain economically competitive and to accomplish the social and cultural goals of what has been called an "information society". We are not offering the global business world a thought-through vision of what the State has accomplished and is trying to accomplish vis-à-vis a digitally driven economy. Contrast this to our competitor nations in the Far East, or to Britain, who are growing far more adept than we in tackling these issues.

The office of the e-envoy in Britain (www.e-envoy.gov.uk/) is a very good start in co-ordinating government policy and activity and defining Britain as an e-commerce economy to other states and potential investors. The role of the office is "leading the drive to get the UK online, to ensure that the country, its citizens and its businesses derive maximum benefit from the knowledge economy". It has working committees on both e-government and e-commerce, dedicated to making Britain work as an information society, to presenting the country as an investment location for e-commerce companies, and to making sure government policy aligns to support these aims. In addition to the e-envoy, three ministers have clearly defined roles on digital issues, with a single minister, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Ms Patricia Hewitt, having overall responsibility.

Leadership and a dedicated office or department - or a combination of both - are needed here to resolve our dangerously ambiguous and sometimes shamefully indifferent situation. And leadership must come from the highest political ranks, not from the civil service. The Irish Government to date has tended to place civil servants in charge of its existing interdepartmental committees on digital issues and in charge of major public projects in the area.

This is not adequate. Civil servants are, by job definition, the administrative army working behind the scenes. The State needs very visible leadership driven by a dedicated individual with the political power to move departments and ministers in the right directions, and the national profile to give the office weight and legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

While the Government should long since have got cracking on this problem - Britain created the e-envoy and e-minister roles back in 1999 - the pending election offers an ideal opportunity for addressing this leadership gap.