Malta – Europe’s Top Performer in eGovernment
Written by Monique Piccione
Malta has just been reconfirmed Europe’s top performer in eGovernment, standing out with a score of 96% amongst the 27 European Union (EU) Member States, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey.
The results were published in the eGovernment Benchmark 2021 reports on Friday 12th November by the European Commission.
The benchmarking study carried out by Capgemini, Sogeti, IDC, and the Politecnico di Milano for the European Commission Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology measures four dimensions as well as compares the state of play of eGovernment services between the participating countries.
In order to assess how countries are performing in eGovernment, eight life events covering the most common domains of public services, namely business start-up, losing and finding a job, career, family life, regular business operations, moving home, transport and starting a small claims procedure, were assessed. Each life event[1] is associated with a journey that businesses and/or citizens experiencing this life event, will go through. For this assessment, mystery shoppers acting as prospective users, visited and assessed webpages relating to these life events, by following a detailed and objective checklist between August and September 2020.
Malta, once again, attained an exceptional result by leading in all the four dimensions and ranking first in the overall results
Each life event is measured once every two years to allow countries to follow up on the results and to implement improvements after each measurement.
User Centricity Dimension
This dimension measures the online ‘availability’, ‘mobile friendliness’ and ‘user support’ of eGovernment services. Malta has ranked first in the online ‘availability’ and ‘user support’ of eGovernment services, leading this overall dimension with a score of 99%; 11% above the EU average.
Transparency Dimension
This dimension examines mainly the service design, delivery processes and access to personal data. Malta leads in this dimension with a score of 98% while the EU average score is 64%.
Key Enablers Dimension
This dimension measures the availability of several technical elements for the delivery of eGovernment services. Malta attained an overall score of 98%, where again it was confirmed leader. Most of the Government Departments, Entities and Agencies provide their services online, and citizens and businesses are no longer required to physically pay a visit to get served. A citizen who needs to communicate digitally with the Government, is to authenticate himself/herself by using the electronic identity (eID), fill in the required application forms, and attach related documentation.
Cross Border Services Dimension
The last dimension measured in this assessment is the Cross Border Services. This dimension, assesses governments’ ability to provide businesses and citizens from other European countries seamless access to online public services. Once again, Malta is the top performer with an overall score of 90%, 35 percentage points above the EU average.
The eGovernment Benchmarking assessment is key to continuous improvement. Government Departments, Entities and Agencies are implementing digitalisation and modernisation initiatives, to continue providing citizens and business best-in-class services.
Malta must be proud of this success.
The eGovernment Benchmark 2021 Insight and Background Reports are available at: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/news-redirect/724214.