The online solution that facilitates online registration and payment for part-time courses at the Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology (Mcast) has been recognised as the Best eGovernment Initiative at the Malta eBusiness Awards held recently.

The solution is accessible at http://shortcourses.mcast.edu.mt .

“The concept is nothing particularly innovative. It simply provides the possibility to register for Mcast part-time courses and pay online. However, the functionality was a huge success, both from the public’s perspective and in terms of internal administration. The feedback on the website’s usability was excellent and this resulted in an exponential increase in online registrations and payments,” revealed Kenneth Bone, the managing director at Seasus, the Mosta-based web development company that created this particular solution.

Hundreds of applications are submitted per call and therefore Mcast needed a system that allowed it to process these applications as efficiently and precisely as possible, given that courses have different end dates.

The solution was easy to use from the perspective of the potential student and also provided a new, more efficient back-end and administration system.

The registrations coming through the old system still needed to be processed predominantly manually.

The new website provides Mcast administrators with the tools to handle the entire process easily, practically with complete automation, concluded Mr Bone.