TWO Government Departments spent £5,400 annually on premium rate telephone services including sports result lines, speaking clocks and weather lines, according to a report on Civil Service telephone management.
The two Departments Health and Transport, Energy and Communications incurred monthly charges of £450 and had no restrictions on the premium rate calls. Three other Departments which were examined had barred the use of such services.
Since the investigation by the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, the two Departments have banned them.
The report also showed that there was scope to save up to £300,000 by more efficient use of a network that links Departments in Dublin with regional centres at a lower unit cost than through the public network.
The Comptroller's report places emphasis on that network, the Government Telecommunications Network, and said its introduction was a "cost effective initiative" saving approximately £2 million annually.
"Our analysis showed that 40 per cent of all calls could have been routed through the GTN but in practice only 23 per cent were. The estimated annual cost to the five Departments of not using the GTN, when it was appropriate to do so, was £90,000."
The report suggests that if there was a 20 per cent increase in the use of the GTN there would be annual savings of £100,000 for all Departments, while a 30 per cent increase would save £300,000. It also recommends that the number of direct lines be reduced.
The investigation revealed that a total of £57,000 was recovered in 1994 from civil servants for personal calls in all Government Departments.
Monitoring of telephone costs was poor in four of the five Departments examined. The exception was the Department of Defence which recovered most from its officials (£22,914). The Department of Transport, Energy and Communications recovered the least (£53).
The report was an examination of the management of telephone facilities in the Civil Service. It looked at the use of telephone facilities in five Departments over a period of a month which accounted for 10 per cent of the Civil Service's total spending of £22.5 million on telecommunications in 1994.