At the launch of the workshop on ‘Modernisation of Civil Service through e-services’ at La Cannelle, Domaines les Pailles on Monday, the minister of Civil Service and Administrative Reforms Ashit Gungah highlighted the importance of e-services.
He believes these services are a critical element that determines the success of any reforms strategy.
“There is a crying need for the public service to shift to state of the art technologies and be digitally up to date in order to overcome the challenges of globalisation,” he said.
Few ministries actually offer online services while the government portal currently offers around 50 e-services. The Ministry of Civil Service is working in collaboration with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology to make the government’s operations fully computerised, increase the number of SMS and e-services and bring services and information within the reach of the public.
“We should be gratified that the minister of Information and Communication Technology has decided to take action and is fully engaged in providing renewed energy to this sector. I am glad that our two ministries are working in collaboration to move this agenda forward at an accelerated pace,” said Gungah.
He added that e-services in Mauritius have largely been developed based on the internal needs of the public sector and technological possibilities, rather than on customer needs and wants.
“This has resulted in a situation where we have in most cases offered e-services that are not used.
Studies carried out elsewhere reveal that effective public e-services can only be developed if governments offer citizen-centric services that deliver measurable public value.
The minister added that the government should adopt marketing strategies to assure the success of e-services. Gungah said he requested the Ministry of Finance to provide funds for the procurement of hardware and IT training for officers in the service.
“The efforts that my ministry is deploying to reform the Civil Service will pay dividends only if we have well developed e-services deliveries,” said the minister.