Malta has been ranked first out of 36 European countries for online government services as per the reports by the European Commission’s eGovernment Benchmark 20211. The eGovernment Benchmark compares the progress of the public authorities of 36 European countries – the 27 EU member states, plus nine others including the United Kingdom, collectively known as EU27+ – in transitioning to digital services.
The country scored 96%, followed by Estonia, which obtained a score of 92%. The report2 said that their digital government is the most user-centric, transparent, technologically enabled and open to users from other European countries. User-centric indicates the quality of the service design utilised by customers at ease, even on mobile. In this respect, Malta obtained a 99% score, 11% higher than the average European score. It got 98% transparency in the supplied services, while the average European score was 64%.
Malta achieved a 98% score for incorporating technical elements for the delivery of online government services, while the European average is 61%. When it came to cross-border services, which indicates the accessibility of services from other countries, Malta obtained a score of 90%, 35% higher than the European average.
Mario Cutajar, Public Service Chief, said this result is a testament to the work carried out in recent years with an investment of 200 million pounds in technology to make public services accessible to anyone and everywhere.
The European Commission’s 2021 eGovernment Benchmark report, produced by Capgemini, its subsidiary Sogeti and consortium partners IDC and Politecnico di Milano, has found that while there is still much more work to be done, European governments demonstrated “resilience and innovation” in swiftly moving vital services online, to assist citizens and businesses to cope with the impacts of the pandemic, providing a template for further action that can be applied across Europe3.
Although the Covid19 pandemic provided a catalyst for digitalisation in some areas, the crisis has not been a panacea to digitally transform public authorities, with important disparities remaining, such as:
- 85% of central government services are available online, compared to 59% of local services
- 91% of services for businesses are online, compared to 77% for citizens
- Less than half (43%) of services can be accessed online by cross-border users
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