Back in 1999, the biggest concern for those using computers was that the “millennium bug” would stop the world. I recall that in 2000, we were still struggling to establish a government presence on the internet. Email had been in use for a short while and that was the first thing that had an “e” in front of it to show that it had evolved to ride the digital revolution.
The following year we established the eMalta Commission and put together the framework of what was to become the national digital agenda that would enable Malta to implement the eEurope Action Plan. The next natural development was the advent of e-Government. Putting the whole of government online was how we planned to use technology to address a political objective with which governments have constantly struggled: dissolving bureaucracy and transforming the public service into a citizen-oriented organisation rather than a collection of vertical silos indulging themselves in the perpetuation of red tape.
E-Government was accompanied by the devolution of authority to local councils and an open university culture that provided a new generation of graduates who could bring about a new management style to the public service. E-Government was powered by technology that was regenerating itself completely every two or three years. But culture and people do not change in just as many years – astute political leadership was behind a sustainable migration to a new mode of public service that could start to deliver on a promise of accountability and transparency.
Computers were being put on every desk in public service offices. But I remember going to meet ‘seasoned’ public servants who insisted that “this e-Government” was merely a short-lived heap of hype that would die anytime soon. They would still dictate their emails to their secretary, while their computer remained covered by a plastic cover. E-mail itself became a generational leap only when it was linked with e-Government; then any Joe or Maria could correspond directly with the director whose email address was published online – a simple measure which encountered a gargantuan resistance on the premise of “data protection”! But we soldiered on and this (basic) principle of transparency was ingrained into the new website standards which demanded that the organisational structure be made available to the taxpayer.
Concurrently, we started looking at emulating what was happening in the top companies in the world: using the web as their new front office for their customers. We were, in fact, forerunners of this in the EU: all the essential public services (decided and agreed upon by the European Commission) were online long before online banking and online supermarkets. By 2008 we were ranked second for the availability and sophistication of our online services and in 2009 and 2010 we went up to top the ranks. Suffice it to say that in the last European benchmarking exercise, Malta scored 100 per cent in five out of the six criteria.
E-Procurement was the only one where we didn’t make it to 100%, and we have since ensured that Government is equipped with the most advanced technology and that all the internal processes for the issue of tenders and the submission of bids is transformed to be done online. A commitment from the public service is now in place so that all the tenders with a value beyond the departmental threshold go fully electronic as of January 2013.
What else then? Have we reached the apex? Absolutely. But what matters is our ability to stay there, and that hinges on our ability to remain agile and to never fear change. If you look at Malta’s completely redesigned e-Government platform, agility is the main function. It took us nearly a decade to put the 100 most important public services online, yet within a year – in 2011 – we put online another 60. And as I write this article, seven Maltese software companies are producing another 140 of them.
All this was do-able because we embraced change and did not give up in the face of resistance. We strived to attain our ambitious objectives whilst others derided our efforts in this sector and relegated its importance and we believed in the Maltese ICT industry and in our ICT professionals who delivered flawlessly and in line with global standards.
What really matters, however, is that our public service is ready to leap into its next generation: a paradigm wherein the government is no longer structured along the traditional, vertical and inward-looking departmental silos but formed along clusters of services as expected by the citizens and businesses. In much the same way that the digital vision for Malta we had back in 2000 was considered by the change-sceptics as a “heap of hype”, this vision for the public service will be also coined (by the same sceptics) as an illusionary dream. I am sure we shall prove them wrong, once more.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Claudio Grech
Quelle/Source: The Malta Independent Online, 07.10.2012
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