The European Commission has released a summary of the 9th eGovernment Benchmarking Report which measures public sector performance of 32 countries (27 EU member states plus Croatia, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey). The report measures six core indicators and through a ranking system, it shows the best performing countries that have implemented the most mature e-Government services. This year Malta was established as the European leader in e-Government after achieving 100% in five of the six core indicators measured.
The first core indicator, ‘Online sophistication’, measures the extent to which eGovernment services allow for interaction and/or transaction between Government and citizens or businesses. The second indicator, ‘Full online availability’ measures to which extent the 20 basic services are available; Malta scored 100% in both.
The third and forth core indicators are User-experience for ‘eServices’ and ‘national portals’. These cover aspects of usability, transparency, privacy, multi-channel policy and the possibility for users to provide feedback; Malta attained 100% in both.
The final two indicators are related to eProcurement. ‘eProcurement visibility’ measures to what extent potential suppliers are able to find information and links to eProcurement by contracting authorities. Malta scored 100%. ‘eProcurement availability’ measures to what extent the eProcurment process can be carried out online and Malta scored 76%.
Hon Dr Austin Gatt, Minister for Information, Transport and Communication in Malta said: “We have always believed in the ability of the Internet to act as a tool to transform and enhance public service delivery. This is the factual realisation of Government’s Vision 2015, wherein we lead the pack through our knowledge, capabilities and determination to cut red-tape.”
Claudio Grech, Chairman of the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA), the agency responsible for e-Government in Malta said: “We converged the technological and administrative developments in the Maltese government into an e-Government synergy enabling us to remain ahead of the curve. We extended the online environment boundaries to open ourselves to a wider audience, capitalising on Internet penetration which has increased exponentially over the last few years.”
The benchmark study has been annually prepared since 2001 and is compiled by Capgemini, Sogeti, IDC, RAND Europe and the Danish Technological Institute for EC’s Directorate General Information Society. The full report will be published in January 2011.
