Today, Austin Gatt, Minister for Information, Transport and Communication (MITC) announced the launch of three e-Government services and an e-Government Services Directory. The three services are the eHealth portal, Online Certificates and Scholarships website.

Funded by MITC through the e-Government Alliance Framework and managed by the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA), these initiatives are aimed at improving the service delivery channels available between the Government and citizens.

Minister Austin Gatt said that 59% of local households have access to the internet with almost 95% of these connected through a broadband connection. This sustains the success of Government’s continuous efforts in modernising civil service by putting it online.

Currently the Government offers 70 online services to citizens and businesses. Once the ongoing projects initialised during the last year are finalised, MITA is planning a new e-Government framework which will be simpler to use as it will streamline the user interfaces to these services. The e-Government 2.0 will also be richer in content, more sophisticated in services and faster to set up. The priority of this new framework will be citizen-centricity, the concept of presenting services and processes focused on the needs of the citizen. The investment on this project will start during this year and will span up to 2012.

The ongoing transformation on the Government’s IT resources is merely part of a much larger restructuring programme in the Government’s approach to offering public services. MITA continues to fulfil all operations of MITTS and took over the functions of the former Information Society Secretariat, ICT in Government Unit and the Core ICT Advisory Committee. The transition from MITTS to MITA is in its final stages following the recent approval of its strategic plan.

Minister Austin Gatt explained the extensive work and effort involved in creating every single new e-Government service and thus thanked the e-Government Unit who manage the development of each and every service from the drawing board up to its launch. Minister Gatt also thanked the Quality Assurance team who strives in its research to make every service achieve and exceed the necessary quality standards.

Following the recent attempted cyber attack on an embassies server, Minister Austin Gatt praised the professional way in which MITA staff managed to neutralise the situation before any damage was done and for the preventive measures taken to ensure minimum impact on services provided to the public.

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