Malta has retained its leading EU ranking in the quality of its e-Government registering substantial qualitative progress in its services and confirming the country's services as excellent European models in this field. This was confirmed in the European Commission's annual report on e-Government services provided by the Member States.

The report recognises Malta's continued "very marked improvement". Malta "sits just behind Austria in second place in the country ranking for online sophistication (96%), and for fully online availability (95%). These high scores put Malta into the position of one of the best performing countries with regard to the benchmark indicators used in this survey.

The main area for improvement consists in achieving 5th stage sophistication on some services. In fact, Malta has managed to record, with six out of nine relevant services reaching the fifth level of sophistication, establishing it as a pro-active leader in the further development of e-Government. From a user-centricity standpoint, Malta scores with 25% above the EU27+ average of 19%.

The report added that "The National Portal of Malta, www.gov....mt, provides access to all the surveyed services and has consistent branding. It provides personalized and targeted access based on user profiles. Malta was able to achieve a score of 98% for its national portal. The EU27+ average is 75%."

The Commission recognised Malta as a "fast mover" notwithstanding the fact that Malta was already in a leadership position last year. The services provided by Malta's Government are also recognised for their sensitivity to the users' needs and are deemed among the most "user-centric", hence fulfilling most of the critical success factors for the effective delivery of e-Government.

Most notably the report holds that the progress since last year "demonstrates that Malta's performance was no flash in the pan but the fruit of a consistent, focused and targeted customer centric programme that aims to provide the Maltese Public with one of the most sophisticated eGovernment service available anywhere in Europe."

Austin Gatt, Minister for Investment, Industry and Information Technology, commented on these results in a press conference today cautioning against a facile impression that these results were attained by some coincidence or because other EU member states did not have the capacity to provide excellent eGovernment. The results are the natural outcome of seven years of hard work that is the pride of all those who contributed to it.

Seven years ago the Government established four policy principles that, though seen unlikely by some then, have now yielded the optimum outcome we were hoping for.

Firstly, the Government invested in sophistication working on developing fully transaction-based eGovernment rather than providing downloadable forms on line as an easy excuse for on line public services.

Secondly, the Government centrally developed the technological platform on which all services could be built providing a unique payment gateway, electronic identity and other common infrastructural elements for all services rather than allowing the waste and duplication of developing a different underlying infrastructure for each service.

Thirdly, from early on in the project the Government outsourced the development of its on line services to Maltese IT SMEs that proved up to the job and rewarded many times over the trust they enjoyed from the Government.