The Director General at the National Statistics Office (NSO), Alfred Camilleri on Tuesday morning, launched the new NSO information portal. Addressing the press at the NSO offices in Lascaris, Mr. Camilleri mentioned that the NSO had been one of the first Government entities to launch a website many years ago, and that they have now moved ahead and are launching a fully fledged online information system. Amongst the main features of the new portal http://nso.gov.mt, he mentioned online access to statistical databases, subscription to various online information services as well as online purchasing of information and publications. Also speaking at the launch, Minister for IT, Austin Gatt stated that this was not just another website but a very important business tool. Minister Gatt had words of praise for Alfred Camilleri and his team, and stated that if all Government Directors and Permanent Secretaries showed the same commitment towards IT, then Malta would be the country in Europe with the best e-government record. Minister Gatt emphasised the importance of perceiving IT as a means of facilitating information suggesting that the faithful Maltese translation of IT should be "teknologija tal-informazzjoni", rather then "teknologija tal-informatika".
The web portal was designed and developed locally by maltaNET. Commenting about the technology, Ian Pace, Team Leader for the maltaNET development team stated "maltaNET today is a well established company in all that is Internet related. Our main expertise in the development side of the business is in content publishing systems. We have a very good track record on the e-government side and the NSO was an especially interesting project due to the dynamic nature of statistical content. Our well proven WebCentre technology has now been deployed successfully in many systems including the Airmalta, ETC, Island Hotels Group and www.di-ve.com."
Quelle: di-ve, 01.03.2005
