The Maltese e-government 2.0 is in the making - MITA chairman

The Maltese e-government services have been recognised to be among the leading in Europe in recent years. Yet, the current platform is being superseded by a completely new one that will propel e-government services into the era of open standards, social networking and mesh-ups. E-government 2.0 is in the making.

Claudio Grech, chairman of the Malta Information Technology Agency, has revealed to i-Tech how the agency, under the direction of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Communication has decided to overhaul the present e-government platform into a new one that would take service delivery to citizens and businesses into an entirely new dimension.

"As we speak, we are entirely re-engineering the complete e-government framework and targeting a new concept of how we deliver e-government services, what we are internally calling 'e-Government 2.0'. We are literally charting the future of electronic services and trying to visualise where we should be in the next five to seven years in terms of e-government and online participation.

"Following last year's successes, strategically, we had two options. We could either continue investing on the platform we started building nearly nine years ago (and most probably would still have kept the first position for the next few years) or really start thinking again about being ahead of the curve. This time round we have the opportunity to use a myriad of technologies which exist out there, focusing on creating an entirely new open platform at the middleware level and re-building completely the e-government collage of components into one which is not bound by technologies or systems but limited only by the depth of service fulfilment the public entities wish to deliver to their clients," he explained to i-Tech.

This decision is a key component of MITA's strategic plan for the years 2009-2012 and was taken shortly after last November the Maltese e-government services were ranked as the most advanced in terms of availability and sophistication in the EU.

"We are creating this central engine, a sort of intelligent services broker at the middle of our e-government which, essentially, will enable us to rapidly deploy any service which government wants to deliver, any time and on any device. If you look at the 70+ transaction-based services that we have today, basically they consist of a form, an attachment or sourcing of documentation from government databases, a payment and an authentication of the individual's identity. We are now creating a scalable repository which will enable us to publish forms and services in a quasi just-in-time manner, in the sense that if tomorrow a ministry decides to launch a particular new public service, such as an application for a particular immunisation, the respective department would be able to do that in a matter of days not months.

"This platform, enabled by MITA but driven by the departments, will give the ministries the facility to deploy immediately and just-in-time services and publishing them with the necessary requirements and safeguards. It goes without saying that this development would not have been possible if we didn't invest in our core components and today we have a mature electronic identity framework and a completely new government payment gateway, which we launched in 2009. "The whole notion underlying our approach is that we want to be in a position to enable the line ministries to deliver services without having actually to ask MITA. This is a radical quantum leap, since it will take e-government services closer to the citizen and not just keep them at the core of the technological hub," insisted Mr Grech.

However, it is not just ministries and public entities that will be able to hop on this engine to deliver public services.

"We are also looking at how trusted third party services could link to our infrastructure," added Mr Grech. "For example what will really make a difference in the day-to-day life of people is the concept of government agents. We will be in a position to enable third party individuals and business organisations to deliver public services which are of interest to their particular client-base or community. We could have a pharmacy providing services to applications for immunisations which acts as an intermediary between the public and government. We could have a telecoms company or a bank which wants to make use of the e-ID infrastructure. This will be possible. We will be open to trusted parties who have a common goal in delivering services to the public."

i-Tech is informed that the new platform will be an open one, in the sense that several technologies can be connected to it and it is not proprietary. It could be open source or a different licensing model; in any case the applied model will be one which will be strictly based on open standards.

Mr Grech recognises that over the last five years there has been a very marked improvement in the way that government departments embraced the e-government concept. However, one of the next challenges is how to derive efficiency gains through e-government services and reducing the total cost of operation of departments. The strong drive on government's e-procurement is a step in this direction.

The most popular e-government services are the vehicle licensing services; the taxation-related services, particularly where business is concerned; the local warden system; and the application and payment for public registry certificates.

The latest survey by the Malta Communications Authority confirmed that 73 per cent of internet users also use e-commerce services, including e-government. Most of these are accessed through the www.mygov.mt portal.

"Most of the services ironically are related to payment. The common trend across the board year on year there is an increase in usage. When one sees the statistics on e-commerce then again the fear factor is not really very much a critical one. Rather than resistance there is more a lack of awareness on the available services and the sophistication of these services. One thing that we don't do very well is the marketing of the services and the communication of the benefits of those services. To that affect we have not as yet taken advantage of the increased propensity of people to use online services and to actually carry out transactions."

Indeed Mr Grech, who in the past was heavily involved in the drawing and implementation of e-government strategies as part of the ministries responsible for IT, admits the lack of public awareness was perhaps the only mistake done in the past.

"We are a stage where we can now really reap the fruit of what we have sown in the last 10 years. In 2000 we did not have one single e-government service. Today we are nearly there. With this step not only the present services but also future services would be online. It is such an enabling framework to independently put services online that we are coming to a stage where services would depend on the demand of the citizens," concluded MITA's chairman.