Malta has once more ranked o among the best in the EU in the provision of e-government services.

In a report benchmarking the 27 EU member states on the provision of online public services in 2010, the Commission said that Malta was leading the way.

Apart from Malta, the other top ranking countries in the ‘9^th e-government benchmark report,’ were Austria, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Sweden.

Cyprus and Greece are considered to be the worst performers in this sector.

The Commission said that the online availability of a basket of 20 basic public services, such as car registration, tax declaration or registration of a new company, across Europe reached 82 per cent in 2010, substantially higher than in 2009 when it stood at 69 per cent.

“The best performers are Austria, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Sweden where the entire list of those basic services is fully online. Bulgaria, Italy and Latvia showed a big improvement during the last year in making services available online.”

The report shows that services for businesses are more advanced than those for citizens.