Hosting Services

• The GOC operates the Government Datacenter through which hosting services are provided to Ministries and Departments. The GOC datacenter hosts physical servers as well as cloud environments (g-Cloud infrastructure) for virtual servers. These provide for back office applications, such as Registry, Central Personnel Systems, Labour Market Information System, Environment Information System, Central Population Database amongst numerous others.
• One of the main hosted service is undoubtedly the Government Web Portal which is the gateway to access applications online through one of its sub-portals, the Citizen Portal. 66 e-Services are on line for the Citizens of Mauritius to interact with the Government anytime, anywhere and in real-time.
• As a key element in the e-Government initiative, the GOC also provides Internet access (around 15,000 users) and email facilities to Government staff (around 10,000 email accounts) of Ministries and Departments.

 

Security

The GOC has made its reputation as a secured environment built around well-defined standards and policies. This solid foundation makes way for providing co-location facilities for servers of Ministries and Departments who do not wish to run a dedicated datacenter. Moreover, in addition to providing Internet access to Ministries and Departments connected through the Government Intranet Network System (GINS), the GOC also provides site-filtered Internet access to secondary schools and public libraries.

Furthermore, the GOC provides secured connectivity through VPN (Virtual Private Network) allowing remote connectivity to servers and also allowing Government staff to work from home – this has been a real enabler during the COVID-19 lockdown period.

 

National Internet Exchange Point (NIXP)

The National Internet Exchange Point is a settlement-free exchange point which allows Internet Service Providers and other associations managing an autonomous network to exchange local Internet traffic which otherwise would be switched internationally. The Internet Exchange Point thus allows previous International bandwidth to be saved. In additional the NIXP also acts as a catalyst to allow the development of local web contents.

The setting up of the NIXP was announced in the Government Programme 2005-2010 and is currently being hosted, free-of-charge, by the Government Online Centre, a department of the National Computer Board. The NIXP is managed by the Mauritius Internet Exchange Point association which is comprised of representatives of Internet Service Providers. It is to be noted that the Government Online Centre is also peering on the exchange. Furthermore, the National Computer Board is represented on the MIXP committee and plays a very active role in the development and maintenance of the NIXP.

The NIXP is operational since December 2005 with four major ISPs in Mauritius peering on it. The GOC started to peer in May 2006. The setting up of the NIXP is a very important milestone for the development of the Internet in Mauritius since local Internet traffic are now being contained in Mauritius and is not consuming International bandwidth which is an expensive resource.

The NIXP in Mauritius has been made possible through a tight collaboration between the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, the NCB and the private ISPs.

 

EServices

A help desk has been set up at the Government Online Centre that provide assistance to citizens as well as Ministries regarding facilities hosted on the government portal including e- services.

E-service stands for an electronic service. Information and Communication Technology are applied in facilitating the delivery of services. In the case of government e-services, government is the service provider and citizens and businesses are the service receivers. Internet is the main channel of e-service delivery but other channels can also be mobile phones, call centres and public kiosks.

The Government Portal hosts about 66 e-services for various Ministries and departments. A new portal is being designed with the aim of providing more interactivity, personalization and better quality of service.

 

Web design & hosting services

The GOC manages the web server which hosts all the websites for the Government and provides necessary technical support to maintain all the websites.

• The Government on the Internet now contains the web site of all the 25 Ministries, and around 130 departments and 50 parastatals.
• The Ministries and department web sites are regularly maintained and re-engineered when needed with the help of the webmasters of the Central Information Systems Divisions.

These sites can be viewed on http://www.govmu.org

 

Government eMail Services (GES)

The GES project was launched in 2001 and consists in setting up the infrastructure for providing email systems for government employees, so as to improve communication between Ministries, government departments and the public. In 2003, email services were set up for 382 users, the total number of users amounting to 6,800 as at 2nd May 2012.

The mail platform was migrated to a more robust one around March 2013 (Exchange 2013) which caters for around 10,000 mailboxes nowadays with an increased storage capacity of 1GB per mailbox.

 

For future improvements (for the GOC):

Streamline the website around 3 distinct pillars or activity areas:

• Portal and Web Development
• Service and Change
• Infrastructure and Operations

This will allow for specialized inputs and better information (categorization) on the website

• Currently the govtcloud.html page is a mixture and information is very much scattered and duplicated across sections

Addition of a live dashboard with statistics

• InfoHighway
• Of course we need to agree on what type of information we can present to the public

Service catalog

• This will be in line with ITSM

Live Chat

• Additional service together with chatbot
• Live chat allows live chatting with a support officer