Public projects are most fruitful when they are owned and funded by the respective government entity (as opposed to a more prescriptive, centralised entity) and driven by business objectives. In order to widen government efficiency, ICT champions are required in important decision-making positions and ICT strategies need to be integrated into overall government policy. Malta is considered one of Europe’s high performers in delivering eGovernment. The country is constantly improving its eGovernment platform to ensure that the number of services available online can increase without a proportionate increase in cost and complexity. The platform’s architecture promotes reusability and scalability. In the eGovernment Benchmark 2012 report, Malta ranked first in four benchmarks (user-centric government, transparent government, citizen mobility, business mobility) and second in the enablers benchmark. The 2012 report also highlighted that eGovernment users are expecting more from the services being supplied. Statistics from Eurostat highlight that the take-up of public online services by citizens is below the EU average. Malta ranked 18th (Fig. 6) in terms of percentage of individuals using eGovernment services and 15th (Fig. 7) in terms of enterprises using the Internet to interact with government. The messages are clear. Users want to interact on everything from health and education to security and tax. They expect government to focus on finding out what citizens want, rather than deciding what they need. Citizens are also expecting government to cut red tape. The development of Digital Government has to be hand-in-hand with efforts to reduce bureaucracy. Fig. 6 Source: Eurostat Fig. 7 Source: Eurostat National Digital Strategy 2014 – 2020 17

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