From the 16th position last year in a similar survey, Malta moved up to second place last April. The only other EU member state deemed to be in a better position than Malta is Austria, although its progression was much slower than Malta's.
The survey examined 14,000 websites in the 25 member states plus Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. This year, the online sophistication of public service delivery in the EU member states has reached an overall score of 75 per cent, while almost 50 per cent of the measured public services are fully available online.
The Commission said that sophistication and full availability indicators show that Austria now leads the way in all the 20 services measures. These include services related to income tax, job search, social security benefits, car registration and a number of services related to businesses such as VAT and registration of a new company.
The Commission said Austria is closely followed in second place by Malta which is also rapidly becoming a class-leading example of how to optimise a government's e-services offering and make it almost 100 per cent transactional.
Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said that online service delivery is now a mature model in the EU and a new paradigm of intelligent, user-oriented e-services is beginning to emerge.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Ivan Camilleri
Quelle/Source: The Times of Malta, 29.06.2006
