The government has announced the launch of a new e-service – the public service online recruitment portal.

Addressing a news conference at the Investment, Industry and IT Ministry in Valletta, Minister Austin Gatt said that before the launch of this service, people had to look for calls for applications in the Government Gazette. “It’s not the best reading material available,” he joked.

He said the major reason for setting up the portal was to make government jobs more accessible to people.

A presentation followed from Espedito Grech of the Management and Personnel Office of the Office of the Prime Minister. He said that the first advantage of this system was that people could apply for jobs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, he said, people could do so from the comfort of their own home and not have to go out and buy the Government Gazette and then have to apply for jobs at the relevant Human Resources Offices of the various ministries.

The site, which can be found on URL https://recruitment.gov.mt can be accessed using a personal e-ID, but if this is not available, people can still access it. The site can also be filtered and searched as required.

Dr Gatt said that, at the end of the day, the government was simply trying to make people’s lives easier by offering an alternate form of access to public sector employment.

He also said that last year Malta was ranked second most sophisticated and third most extensive in the EU for its e-government services. “We need to build on that. We need not only to maintain the standard, but improve it and take first place,” he said.

He pointed out that there are about 60 government e-services, many of which are being revamped. “However, we have four defects. The first is that the business process before setting up an e-service is taking too long.

“The second is that there are too many people doing their own thing,” he continued. “We need more uniformity – especially with page design. The third is that there is not enough initiative from various departments, they rely too much on the IT Ministry for ideas. The last issue to be addressed is to refine our services. We must remember that we are there to provide a service to the customer – and that is each and every citizen,” he said.

Dr Gatt said that to put these matters right, the government has decided to issue one single call for tenders for the next 40 e-services.

“This will mean a shorter period of time for the common business process to be drafted and more uniformity in the services we offer,” he concluded.