According to Maltatoday,the European Commission’s report “e-Government Benchmark Report 2017” has Malta classified in the first place among all the EU countries when it comes to the provision of online services. This first position was in all established indicators, related to technical availability and accessibility of online services.
Malta has invested greatly over the last 4 years to improve the ease of access of online services. Citizens who do not have access to the internet or those that prefer a personalised experience are now able to visit a one-stop-shop outlet where all available services are provided.
Through online services, the Maltese Government have managed to simplify processes and reduce waiting time. Over 800 services are available to citizens and made available through e-forms. Services that may have needed 22 different forms filled out, today only need one form. Previously Business First’s waiting time to start a business was two months, that is now reduced to three days.
Results from the e-Government Benchmark 2017
The e-Government Benchmark Report 2017 measures the delivery and performance of e-Government services in 34 countries (comprising the 28 European Union Member States, together with Iceland, Norway, Montenegro, Republic of Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey).
Malta was reconfirmed as the best performer and leader in user centricity and delivery of digital public services in Europe. This leads the way to Europe’s ambition to create a Digital Single Market.
The benchmarking study carried out by Capgemini, Sogeti, IDC, and the Politecnico di Milano measuring Malta’s outstanding performance measures four top-level indicators between participating countries. As happened last year, Malta has again attained an exceptional result by leading in all the top-level indicators and ranking first in the overall results.
Indicator one: User Centricity. Here the report measures the online ‘availability’, ‘usability’ and mobile friendliness of eGovernment services. Malta has ranked first in the online availability and usability measurements and also in the overall indicator, with a score of 98% – 18 percentage points more than the EU average.
Indicator two: Transparency. Malta with a score of 94% is way ahead of all participating countries. The EU average score is that of 59%. The report examines the extent to which governments are transparent about their own responsibilities and performance, the service delivery process, and the personal data involved.
Indicator three: Cross Border Mobility. This assesses governments’ ability to provide businesses and citizens seamless access to online public services when they are away from their home country. Once again, Malta has a stong lead in the rankings with an overall score of 98.5%, 35.5 percentage points more than the EU average.
Indicator four: Key Enablers . The report here measures the availability of several technical elements which are deemed important for the delivery of eGovernment services. Malta has again in this field, achieved an overall score of 98%, 46 percentage points more than the EU average.
Principles promoted by the new eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020
The European Commission’s new Action Plan for 2016-2020, wants to develop several principles that support the plan’s varied aspects.
- The Once Only Principle, where citizens are required to provide information only once to a public administration,
2. Services that are inclusive and accessible to elderly and people with disabilities
3. Making and designing digital public services to work seamlessly across the Single Market.
4. All services must be compliant with data protection, privacy and IT security by integrating these elements during the design phase.
Several good practices presented by Malta
The e-Government Benchmarking report presents several good practices that were implemented by the EU member states.
In the case of Malta, these include Maltapps, together with the Servizz.Gov portal, the e-Courts portal, the BusinessFirst portal, the MyHealth portal and the JobsPlus portal.
Maltapps: Maltese Government launched the first set of mobile Government systems in March 2017 giving access to a wider range of public services such as taxation, education and culture. Through the ‘mother app’, users can access all the other apps published by Government.
ServizzGov: This portal covers all the Government services, allowing citizens to communicate with the central Government, local councils and public entities. Services are classified under 12 sectors, representing various Government entities and departments.
E-courts: The portal has been designed as ‘mobile first’ and provides digital access to the work done by the judicial process to both legal professionals and citizens who are involved in the legal process.
BusinessFirst: Through this portal, Government provides a point of single contact for businesses. Apart from providing important information for businesses, this portal also contains tools that can be used by both start-ups and established businesses.
MyHealth: The Next Generation myHealth portal provides citizens and their respective private medical doctors with the possibility of accessing and viewing parts of the patient’s medical records maintained in the Maltese public healthcare system. This information can be accessed through the e-ID credentials.
JobsPlus : This portal which offers the opportunity to job seekers to create a personalised digital profile include the skills and roles they are interested to work in. Employers can create their vacancy profiles and the portal matches these profiles to the skills of the job seekers and vice versa.
