Cork City Council spend more than €4.5m for IT over two years

CORK City Council spent more than €4.5m on IT equipment and support in 2021 and 2022, The Echo can reveal.

Information obtained from the local authority shows that Cork City Council spent around €1.9m on IT equipment and support in 2021, along with a further €2.6m in 2022.

A spokesperson for the local authority explained that some of this expenditure went towards combating the threat of cyber attacks.

The local authority also spent around €340,000 on remote working costs to allow staff to work from home between the start of 2020 and the end of 2022.

With the Covid-19 pandemic arriving in Ireland in early 2020, many workforces adopted a work from home approach.

To facilitate this, Cork City Council spent around €185,000 in 2020, along with a further €99,000 in 2021 and €54,000 in 2022.

Speaking about the more than €4.5m spent on IT equipment and support, a spokesperson for Cork City Council explained that “2021 and 2022 were busy years for Cork City Council as the organisation continued on its digital transformation journey.

“New online services were added to over 20 websites, new public wi-fi schemes, remote working was implemented and a councillor portal was launched.

“As organisations undergo this digital transformation, the threat from cyber incidents continues to increase and expenditure on both prevention measures, staff awareness and incident management have also increased.”

Speaking to The Echo, Labour Local Area Rep Peter Horgan, called for this expenditure information, and other information, to be made readily available to the people of Cork without the need for media queries or Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.

“Local authorities in this day and age need to push an adequate digital policy that serves citizens and workers in City Hall,” he said.

“What I would like to see is a merger of IT with transparency directives and a creation of a hub where all spending and issues are published proactively for the city to interrogate without the need for FOI requests.

“This data should range from housing repairs, maintenance of roads and footpaths, to the contracts entered into for big projects such as the Events Centre and BusConnects.

“The model I would suggest examining is based on the South Bend Transparency Hub in Indiana in the United States,” Mr Horgan added.

“The Executive Order to create an open data hub was signed by then Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is now Secretary of Transportation in the Biden Administration.

“The hub was re-kitted in 2020 and it serves as a standard hub for submitting requests by members of the public, but also allows the public to see stats held by the city on issues ranging from crime statistics to traffic calming measures.

“A pro-active digital freedom local authority approach here in Cork would negate the time spent on Freedom of Information requests in the long term by local authorities.

“By publishing data in a format that is easy to use and for all to see and engage with, you foster more local democracy engagement outside of and within the election cycles at local level.”