The benchmarking exercise, which was commissioned by the European Commission, evaluated e-government services in all 27 EU member states, as well as Croatia, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland (EU27+).
The last measurement, which ranked Malta in second place, was made in September 2007.
On the provision of 20 basic services identified in the benchmarking exercise, 12 citizen and 8 business services, Malta obtained full marks on full online availability, together with Portugal, Sweden and Austria. The EU27+ average stands at 71 per cent.
Malta has also scored full marks on the online sophistication of business services, the only country to do so, while the EU27+ average is 83 per cent.
On eProcurement availability, Malta has obtained a grade of 92 per cent, behind Estonia, Ireland and Luxembourg, but significantly above the 56 per cent average recorded among the nations surveyed.
Malta also performed well on user experience. It obtained full marks on its “one-stop shop” and on user-focused portal design, ranked second on user satisfaction monitoring and third on usability, although it was not ranked as highly on accessibility.
At a press conference organised on the occasion of the report’s publication, IT Minister Austin Gatt expressed his satisfaction at the result, noting that it was an achievement obtained through good government policy and the collective effort of staff at the Malta IT Agency (MITA) and elsewhere.
Dr Gatt described the move into e-government as a “silent revolution” which left a great impact, and noted that the Maltese e-government portal registers around 4 million transactions monthly, while its payment gateway handles around €40 million annually.
He noted that currently around 96 per cent of government services are provided online. While government aimed for 100 per cent coverage, it is also aiming to simplify processes, noting that, for instance, there was a great variety in online forms which needed to be tackled.
MITA chairman Claudio Grech said that the agency now faced the challenging task of maintaining Malta’s top position while other nations improved their own services.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): John Paul Cordina
Quelle/Source: di-ve, 19.11.2009
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