The Government will next month put out to tender a contract to build the main systems that will power its e-government strategy, Mr Oliver Ryan, director of Reach, said yesterday.

The Reach Agency is the body co-ordinating the Government's strategy to integrate the internal systems of the public services and make them available to people on the internet. Companies expected to bid include systems integration firms EDS, KPMG, IBM, Accenture and Cap Gemini.

Mr Ryan, who was speaking at an e-government conference at Trinity College yesterday, said a pilot version of the system, developed by KPMG Consulting, was at final testing stage and would be used until mid-summer next year.

The Irish e-government service would offer relatively simple services, such as providing driving licences online, as well as more complex ones such as social security and health payments, he added.

Rather than just relying on a single e-channel, the Government wanted to introduce a variety of contact points to reach customers, including telephone call centres and local offices, Mr Ryan said.

The Reach agency is taking part in a pilot project with Donegal County Council, which is setting up a number of decentralised public offices to act as one-stop shops for customers, Mr Ryan said. "We want to test out the services with the public in a more controlled environment to see if this model should be rolled out nationally," he said.

E-government services will be based on the concept of citizens using one identification number - the Personal Public Service Number - for easier access a range of different services.

The intention is to make it possible for each citizen to store all their public records and data with one central data vault or e-government broker. A customer or agency will then be able to access this broker to extract the necessary information to supply a passport or driving licence or supply social security payments. This should cut the amount of paperwork needed to serve customers.

One concern that may be raised is the issue of privacy. For this reason, the legislation driving the adoption of a single identification number for government services - the Social Welfare Act 1998 - excludes the Garda from using this method of interaction, according to Mr Ryan.

"There is a fear that it (the data broker) could be used improperly," he said. "It is our firm objective to do it fully in compliance with the Data Protection Act. In Europe there is a much stronger culture of the protection of data than in the US, where some public services can sell on information for commercial gain," he said.

These privacy issues will be the next big debate surrounding e-government, according to Mr Ryan.