Council is enhancing online payments service to customers
A MYRIAD of new online services are already on offer with more to follow which will allow customers to interact more swiftly with Sligo County Council.
On Monday last, in tandem with the first full meeting of the Council in 2024, councillors learned just how much ground has been covered already, with Jimmy O’Brien, Head of Information Services, Sligo County Council (SCC), giving elected members and officials a presentation, which explained just how far things have moved and where the online roll out by SCC is heading in 2024 and beyond.
This online initiative by SCC is part of a government initiative Connecting Government 2030, A Digital Strategy for the Public Service.
The aim is that 90 percent of Council services would have an online option by 2030.
The platform to deliver this is called mycoco.ie, similar to mygov. ie. which offers digital solutions for local authorities, for the public, staff, and elected members.
As part of that initiative SCC has had to replace its online payment options.
For Sligo there are eight payments that can be made online with six of those now coming under the responsibility of the new initiative, the two SCC are not responsible for are Motor Tax (Central Government) and dog licences.
Sligo is responsible for the following payments: Housing Loans, Traffic Fines, Commercial Rates, Fire Charges, Business Improvement District (BID) contribution and Housing Grants.
“The idea was to improve and bring on the service for these payments and deliver these to the customer,” Mr O’Brien explained.
“At the moment now our rates/ housing customers can go into mycoco.ie, see their current balance and make a part payment,” he said.
“This has been up and running for a couple of months and it is a much superior solution which is proving very popular with ratepayers and today we are officially launching it here at this meeting,” he said.
He went on to explain the service in greater detail, flagging up new options such as ‘quick pay’ and oneoff payments, such as fire charges. That payment can be made for any payment customers might wish to pay.
A mobile app will roll out with a publicity campaign starting shortly (next week) to make people in Sligo aware of what new options they have online in terms of payments.
Among other services to be rolled out include commercial rate payments being made available online, and integration with banking apps.
At present you have to pay by credit card or laser card, where charges are incurred, but there is a concept now - open banking - that allows you to pay without your credit card and this results in lesser costs for SCC and the customer. Other new services will include making payments through QR codes.
“This is just the beginning in terms of what we are doing online, we will be doing a lot more,” he said.
Asked by Cllr Dónal Gilroy if there was a “paper back-up” should the online system fail, he confirmed there was, adding that rate customers will still get their rate demand. Cllr Michael Clarke welcomed the advances being made, as did Cllr Marie Casserly who added “it’s clear there is a huge amount of work done and more being done behind the scenes on this.”