The public service suffers serious prejudice. It conjures up images of a bureaucratic nine-to-five mentality, overstaffed ministries operating in isolation and constant, almost secretive, filing.

In recent years, the public service embarked on various initiatives to improve on delivery and consult with the very reason of its existence: the public.

The tone of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and the head of the civil service, Mario Cutajar, when speaking at the launch of this year’s Public Service Week was positive and ambitious. The initiatives announced deserve closer scrutiny.

The overall vision, Dr Muscat said, is 24/7 access to government services. While this vision is being packaged as something new, in reality, access to online services has been the underlying statement for all e-government initiatives for the past decade. Dr Muscat also questioned why, despite Malta leading in the implementation of online services, the public uptake is still low. Why is it that, after so many years of experience and investment in e-government initiatives, the answer still escapes the government? And why, despite offering 24/7 front-ends, these are still managed by nine-to-five back-end operations?

The government plans to define astrategy for mobile services by the end of the third quarter of this year. But this strategy, which should have been published years ago, must already exist, part of Digital Malta, the national ICT strategy covering 2014-2020.

Mr Cutajar referred to the simplification of online forms. Again, this is not new as for years the government has been reviewing back-end, office operations to facilitate front-end, online offerings.

He said 250 simplifications were made last year. Yet, despite the efforts to cut down on the administrative burden, in the World Bank Group’s ‘Doing business 2016: measuring regulatory quality and efficiency’, Malta still ranks in 80th place out of 189 countries.

A crucial element in any service is the staff. The government says it wants to invest more in its workers and that the Centre for Development Research and Training should act as a college for public administration. It lays stress on matching jobs with skills and personality to ensure job satisfaction. They are welcome initiatives because one would expect that Malta’s largest employer – over 41,000 people are employed by government – would be a leader in human resources management and investment.

There was also talk on defining quality. In the past, many initiatives were taken to define and deliver quality services. ‘Quality service’ was the theme of last year’s Public Service Week. The public deserves a candid, up-to-date report on the state of play with regard to quality. One of the initiatives taken was a one-stop shop.

For some reasons it was branded servizz.gov, so what is essentially a physical front desk is being promoted as an online service. Does a one-stop shop need to have three centres?

Public Service Week is a positive initiative as it promotes transparency and public confidence and shows how thegovernment is communicating with stakeholders. It is also positive that the public service is seeking ways to improve. After all, a stronger public service is in the interest of all.

However, one should avoid speaking of new initiatives when many would have already been launched in the past.

Moreover, the public expects tangible results. Credibility is achieved not only through the number of targets setbut, more importantly, on what results are achieved.