Costs on some vote machines due to run until 2029

E-VOTING:THE TAXPAYER is liable for leased storage of some e-voting machines up until 2029, it has emerged.

In his report for 2008 published yesterday, Comptroller and Auditor General John Buckley revealed the e-voting machines cost the State €54.4 million up to the time it was decided “significant additional costs” associated with continuing the project could not be supported.

But Mr Buckley also found some of the controversial leases for the storage of the machines which the Government negotiated at various sites around the country have up to 20 years left to run.

He cited the example of Cavan-Monaghan, where a lease costing €16,800 a year is due to run until 2029. He also instanced a lease in Cork costing €25,200 a year, which is due to run until 2024.

In addition, the relocation of voting machines from 12 separate storage points to the Department of Defence facility at Gormanston in Co Meath, cost the taxpayer €328,000 in site preparation and consultancy costs alone.

The voting machines initially cost a little more than €41 million. With software and other hardware costs this rose to €49 million. Training and awareness cost a further €2.7 million, while “other” development costs came to €1.4 million and storage accounted for €3.2 million. The decision to end the project was announced in April 2008. An inter-departmental taskforce, charged with finding the “most economically advantageous approach” to dispose of the machines, had its first meeting in July 2009.

The e-voting project was, however, exceeded in cost by the “Public Service Broker” project, which cost €71 million to set up and up to €15 million a year to run, before it, too, was “terminated”.

The Public Service Broker was to be a key e-government project aimed at providing interactive customer services. It was set up by the “Reach” unit in the Department of Social and Family Affairs. It was to provide for exchange of data between Government agencies including identity authentication for PAYE taxpayers and a death notification service linking the general register office with almost 40 other departments and agencies.

In April 2008 the Government moved the project to the Department of Finance which shut down the project’s reachservices.ie portal and integrated content with the Government website.

Other functions were allocated to different agencies, including Revenue and the Department of Finance itself.

Mr Buckley concluded it was the nature of large-scale information technology projects that they can be overtaken by technical developments and the decision to abandon a project that is not working is the correct course because it avoids spending further public money.

But he said replacement of Broker by other services resulted in an effective write-off of some €27.3 million of capital expenditure.

“In the case of both projects reasonable steps are being taken to wind down the projects and reuse or dispose of assets no longer being utilised,” he said.