There will be full email access to all Government Departments for the public by next June. Websites and directories of officials in these Departments may be available even before then, according to the Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Taoiseach, Mr Dermot McCarthy.
He was speaking at a conference organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions yesterday on "The Information Society: A New World of Work". These initiatives are part of the changes required as a result of the Freedom of Information Act.
In future there would be more emphasis on delivering services to the customer and less on procedures, he said.
The general secretary of the ICTU, Mr Peter Cassells, said: "The scale of the transformation required, in my view, to support the repositioning of Irish society and Irish workplaces for the information age has not yet been grasped."
He added: "New technologies in themselves will not guarantee increased productivity, economic growth or improvement in living standards. These will require deep attitudinal and organisational change."
The technology officer of SIPTU, Ms Barbara Kelly, said that if companies were concerned about skill shortages and inadequacies in the education and training system, they should "put their money where their mouth is" and fund some of the programmes needed to fill the gaps.