Parliamentary Secretary for Public Dialogue and Information, Hon. Chris Said launched a web portal for Local Councils, coordinated by the Department for Local Government, aiming at empowering their role and assisting citizens in easily accessing local councils' services.

More precisely, the main objectives for the creation of this web portal -according to Dr. Said- are firstly, encourage local councils to effectively interact with the community in general, and, secondly, provide international users with a valuable tool allowing them to better understand the geo-cultural composition of the Maltese Islands, with their different specificities that prevails in each locality. The portal also promotes the advantages of standardisation, opening the channels of locality-based prioritisation and differentiation. Additional positive characteristics of this web portal refer to user-friendliness, accessibility, training and knowledge-sharing among local councils. The easier collection and assessment of information across the 68 local councils is an extra benefit provided by the portal for Local Councils.

According to Dr. Chris Said "If local councils invest sufficient commitment and time in this project, the joint result of this portal can serve as an automatic promotional tool earmarked to generate stronger dynamics in the domestic and inbound tourism. Moreover, this portal will add value to the inherent customer-care services and will help local councils reduce the pressures related to queries".

The Director of Local Government, Mr. Natalino Attard, who presented the new portal, states that web-users may find it more convenient accessing this portal to retrieve the necessary information related to local council services, avoiding queuing at the local council offices or phoning in. To a great extent, local councils have realized the benefits of this portal and have positively contributed towards it. Training was provided to all local councils in order to ensure ongoing maintenance of the portal. The concise format of each locality gives a good opportunity to develop this bi-lingual portal to a multi-lingual one, which could include Italian, French and German.

Further information:

• Original Press Release - Department of Information-Malta Official Website
• Local Councils Portal Website