After 53 years, Ireland's big book of business and politics is going digital
Ireland – A Directory includes information on thousands of organisations up and down the country.
IRELAND’S BIG DIRECTORY of businesses and public bodies is going digital with a new app to be launched later this year.
Ireland – A Directory has been published in book format for over 50 years by the Institute of Public Administration (IPA), the body responsible for public sector skills training programmes.
It collates information on businesses and public bodies. According to the organisation, Ireland – A Directory is “one of the most comprehensive databases” on public and private organisations in the country.
This includes companies, government departments and agencies, voluntary organisations and third level institutions, among others. It has been billed as the “essential guide and resource” for understanding public affairs in Ireland.
The 2018 edition of the book featured approximately 9,000 organisations in a 400-page volume. The hard copy of the book costs €70.
Leo Varadkar at the launch of the book's 2017 edition
Going digital
However, the IPA has put out a call for tenders from app developers to design and build an app that would digitise this information.
It has cited Ireland’s high mobile phone usage as a key reason for making the information available in a mobile format.
Currently the information for the hard-copy version of the book is gathered through online and postal forms. This is usually done between April and October every year ahead of publishing in December.
With the app, the IPA plans to make the information more accessible for subscribers to the directory and allow it to be updated in real-time.
Users will be able to search the smartphone app for a certain organisation and find all relevant information about it. The app is scheduled to launch in December of this year.
IPA hasn’t yet disclosed how subscriptions in the app will work, although the app itself will be free to download. The organisation is also considering payment options within the app for purchasing hard copies of the directory.
