The statement by Together Gibraltar on the delivery of eServices underscores their total lack of understanding of the work involved in delivering these services, and their complete inability to comprehend the detailed information already provided.
The information given in Parliament last May by Minister Isola to a Question by Marlene Hassan Nahon was a comprehensive and complete answer detailing every penny expended in each of the three years on all Digital Services, including the costs of all the hardware, software, network and infrastructure on which the eServices project relies and is dependent on, as well as the costs of delivering Covid related services. What is the point of eServices if the hardware, servers or network fail and the services are not available? They are all part of the Government delivery of these services.
The facts are as follows;
- The actual amount at the time of the Parliamentary Question expended exclusively on eServices for the last 3 years was £4.9M and not £13M as Together Gibraltar erroneously states.
- The remaining £8.1M were expended on the development of eAdministration, Counter Reduction Services, Security and other services. These are all different component parts of a Digital Government.
- Together Gibraltar suggests the only service available is Employment. This is simply not true and intended to ignore the reality of what has been delivered to the public during this time. There are numerous services available online.
- This week, the first phase of the Income Tax service went online and is now live with more services to be added shortly.
- Some 20,000 transactions have been carried out online with fees paid to Government from online transactions exceeding £760,000.
Its time Together Gibraltar spent a little more time understanding the issues and informing itself better of the reality of what is happening and the incredible work being undertaken by many within the public sector to make this vision a reality.
The work engaged in delivering these services impacts on each and every Department and Government is grateful for the dedication and determination of these Departments in continuing to work to deliver more and more services to the public. Government fully expects that within the next 12 months further Departments will be added to the list providing full eServices. These will be welcomed by the entire community.
Minister Isola commented: “The change from paper to delivery of Digital Services across Government is a challenging and complex one. I have every confidence we will get there and become more efficient as we enable citizens and businesses alike to interact with us from their office or home, very much more easily than at present and at any time. I am extremely grateful to all those that are working so hard with us to make this revolutionary change to our system of administration a reality. Together Gibraltar is clearly not interested in the progress being made but simply playing cheap politics. What a shame.”
ENDS
