Country: Ireland

The first public service-wide Innovation Week in Ireland was held in December 2019 where public service bodies collectively developed over 200 events and activities across the country to spotlight innovation. Teams had an opportunity to explore the meaning of innovation in order to create a common language, participate in engaging and creative sessions and collaborate with colleagues from across other areas of the public service and beyond.

The Public Service Innovation Fund provides public service bodies in Ireland with a means to fund innovative projects that may not otherwise get financed by their organisations. It was developed to help promote a greater culture of innovation and experimentation in the Irish Public Service, and to showcase the benefits of innovation to other public servants considering embarking on their own innovative project. This is Ireland's first public service-only innovation funding mechanism.

Administrative validation of waiting list is where patients are contacted by hospitals in writing to confirm if they still require hospital care or wish to be removed from a waiting list. Many patients do not reply to validation letters. This innovation involved a collaborative redesign of the validation letter, the application of a range of behavioural insights to letter design and testing through a randomised control trial.

The Ordnance Survey Ireland has made available linked open data on Covid-19 from the HSPC. The feature service contains the up to date Covid-19 Daily Statistics as well as the Profile of Covid-19 Daily Statistics for Ireland, as reported by the Health Surveillance Protection Centre.The Covid-19 Daily Statistics are updated on a daily basis, with the latest record reporting the counts recorded at 1pm the same day.

A COVID-19 dashboard provides up-to-date data on COVID-19 in Ireland as well as information on global cases.

The Irish national open data portal hosts datasets including lists of hospitals, lists of pharmacies, boundary data and nursing homes that can be used to better understand the impact of COVID-19.

A new social welfare payment for employees and the self-employed who have lost employment due to Covid 19. A simple, quick, online payment. [This is different to the Wage Subsidy scheme which is operated by the Revenue Commissioners and seeks to maintain the relationship between the employer and employee]

The communications regulator has approved plans to release extra radio spectrum to add capacity for mobile phone and broadband connectivity. The regulator plans to release radio spectrum in the 700MHz and the 2.6GHz bands to allow mobile operators to meet increased voice and data traffic. It also said it has liberalised the use of the existing 2.1GHz band so that it can be used for 4G connectivity and other technology, rather than just 3G.

A cross-platform teaching initiative has been developed by RTÉ, Ireland's National Broadcaster, at short notice with the support of the Department of Education. It is aimed at students in primary school.

Akkure, an Irish digital health start-up, has launched the ‘COVIDMedBot’, an online free personalised risk assessment and guideline tool for use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Akkure is based at NovaUCD, the Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs at University College Dublin.