The disciplinary measures in place for civil servants needs to be reviewed, the head of the civil service, Mario Cutajar said today. 

Addressing a Public Service Conference, Mr Cutajar said the disciplinary code for civil servants was not sufficient and the public service management code needed an overhaul. This he said would be finalised buy the end of the year.  

Mr Cutajar said 250 simplification measures had been introduce last year, in a bid to cut out red tape. The government he said had pledged to offer a better service to citizens ,cutting out the need to shuffle from office to office to get something done.

To this aim, three centres had been opened, in Qawra, Paola and Birkirkara, offering some 250 services in each centre. Three new centres would also be opened this year. 

Mr Cutajar said he was not satisfied with the public's use of online public services and more needed to be done. He said all online services would be reviewed and online forms would be simplified. 

"Some online services and forms need a lawyer to be filled in properly," he said. 

Mr Cutajar said he had analysed the past few Auditor-General reports on the civil service and found that the same recommendations had been repeated over the past few years. He questioned why lessons had not been learnt and shortcomings were repeated.  

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat also addressed the conference. He said the public sector's measure of success would be to ask if citizens would still use its services if they had another choice.  

Dr Muscat said coming from a private sector background his first taste of public service over the past two years was "schizophrenic". He said he could not understand the mix between a sense of dire urgency and hard work, and others who had a malaise.

On the other hand, he said, he was satisfied with the commitment towards improving online services. Likening the current service to a "church notice board", Dr Muscat said people knew the service existed but were not using it enough.