The Notifications Service enables the communication between Government, citizens and businesses.  Through its web-based Notifications Portal, it gives complete access to Government Ministries/Public Entities’ clients and administrators to send notifications, via SMS (1-way) and/or Email, to citizens and businesses.

 This shared service has two modes of operation, manual (through the Notifications Portal) or automated (through an Application Program Interface (API)).  A user that is granted access to the Notifications Portal will be able to access the Notification Portal using the CORP credentials.  If the user is not a member of the CORP domain, a system account will be created. 

 The Notifications Shared Service provides the following functionalities: 

• Manual and Integrated posting of SMS via JSON and XML acknowledgements;
• Email and SMS messages accepting ASCII characters, Unicode and multilingual support;
• Preferred language set to each recipient in a group;
• Receipt and Validation of incoming SMS from Recipients;
• Functionality that allows SMSs greater than 160 characters to be automatically split into more than one message (up to 7 messages);
• Scheduling of sending of SMSs and Emails;
• Sending of SMSs to both local and foreign numbers;
• Sending Bulk Email and/or SMSs to a predefined group of recipients; and
• Attachment of documents when sending Emails.

Authorised users are provided with reporting functionality which provides detailed SMS statuses that are consumed by respective Government Services.  Such reporting includes also filtering functionality for refined searches.

 

Note: All message content data for both SMS and email is cleared upon either successful delivery of a message to the intended recipient or upon an undelivered acknowledgment from the operator. In the case where messages are pending delivery (this could be due to various reasons such as operator issues/recipient unreachable), the message content is cleared after 96hrs.

 

MITA Responsibilities

MITA shall provide the following Services to the Client:

• Upkeep and hosting of the Notifications Platform;
• Management of Portal/ API accounts for new services
• Creation of appointed administrator accounts on first-time service integration
• Provision of technical support and consultancy services to Clients and respective

Client Responsibilities

The Client shall be responsible for the:

• correctness and accuracy of the information transmitted through the Notifications gateway using the network of the Mobile Operators. The Client shall ensure that the content of each Message does not infringe any law. The Client shall indemnify MITA in the event of a third-party claim in relation to the content of any Message;
• appointment of a least two (2) administrators, responsible for the management of user accounts within that service;
• appointment of such personnel as necessary to address any reasonable requests made by MITA from time to time in connection with the provision of this service;
• creation of system accounts only to users that are not a member of the CORP domain;
• cooperation with MITA including but not limited to providing all such necessary information as may be required by MITA for the purpose of rendering the Services;
• adherence to the data protection legislation by, amongst others, ensuring that:
• • access is limited to individual authorised users;
  • data is not processed for any purpose that is incompatible with that for which the information is collected;
  • reasonable measures are taken to complete, correct, block or erase data to the extent that such data is incomplete or incorrect;
  • personal data is not kept for a period longer than is necessary; 

Assumptions

MITA does not guarantee continuous and fault free provision of Service by the Mobile Operators or other Third Party networks and shall not be responsible for the transmission of the Service over the network of such Mobile Operators or other Third Party networks.

This service is dependent upon the service availability of the networks of  the Mobile Operators and other dependent Third Parties. The timeliness of the delivery of the Messages may be delayed or otherwise negatively impacted by fluctuating traffic patterns. MITA will not accept liability nor will it be held liable or accountable for undelivered messages or messages delated in circumstances arising and being outside the control of MITA.

Data Protection and GDPR

Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) collects and processes data in accordance to the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the Data Protection Act 2001 and any other subsidiary legislation. MITA also adheres to the GMICT Policies and Procedures. For further information, you may contact MITA’s DPO at dp.mita@gov.mt