Juan Ameen
IT firms urged to work closer with University
IT companies are being urged to build a strong relationship with the University to counteract the lack of human resources in the sector.
Investment Minister Austin Gatt called on IT companies to collaborate more with the University of Malta and the Malta College of Arts and Science and Technology to look for potential employees among the IT students.
"The private sector is somewhat ignoring cooperation with the University and MCAST. In assisting the University, you will be provided with the people you need," Dr Gatt told IT company owners.
A number of IT companies approach IT students, offering them a monthly salary and a contract binding them to work with the company after graduation.
Speaking during the roll-out of a three-year programme by the government IT agency MITA, Dr Gatt pointed out that the lack of human resources was one of the sector's main problems.
He listed plans to apply for about €26 million in EU funds for the government's e-learning system, adding that the new identity cards, with an electronic chip, should be introduced by next year.
Plus, responsibility for the electronic geographical mapping system of the Maltese Islands, which now falls under the planning authority, will be handed over to MITA.
MITA's 80 proposals for the next three years were listed by the agency's chairman Claudio Grech. These include establishing a professional national body for ICT that would have the dual role of acting as a self-regulating mechanism and setting up a code of conduct.
Permanent structures for chief information officers would be set up in ministries and the government's data centre would be updated, to become more efficient with a stronger storage capacity.
Moreover, MITA would work on a next-generation network in government entities together with the communications authority, Mr Grech said. The currently used e-government system would be totally overhauled and replaced by an updated version, 2.0, with a stronger focus on a citizen-needs approach instead of being portal-based.
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Jonathan Camilleri
Dec 6th 2011, 06:59
I think students have to be careful of IT companies exploiting talent of students by giving them minimal salaries, which do not adequately compensate for the continuous learning curve and research involved in computer science and ever-changing technologies.
Keith Galea
Nov 4th 2009, 23:11
@ A.Farrugia
It doesn't matter what kind of programming languages are taught, University is not a place to learn programming languages, but learning the academic foundations of computer science, because even if programming languages get outdated, we can adapt to anything, that is why University is an academia. I, like many other students in my year are well capable of learning any programming languages within days or weeks, and within the four years i've been there we've learnt over 9 programming languages on our own (and some assisted by lecturers as well), which points out that yes we are well prepared.
With regards to the industry they should look at what kind of work students are producing in their thesis, as most of the thesis's involve more challenges than one would encounter in the normal work world (unless it's a Masters or PhD research). At least this is what i have deduced from my years studying and working.
A. Farrugia
Nov 4th 2009, 11:35
The critical factor here is the IT Curriculum - Are BSc IT/Computing and BSc Business & Computing students being given a good preparation to deal with full-time employment in the dynamic IT field? Is the curriculum discussed with leading companies in the IT field? If not, urging co-operation won't get us far, as these companies will simply resort to the foreign labour market. After all, that's what the EU labour market regulations are all about!
A few years back, people I know that were studying B.Sc Business & Computing were studying programming languages, for instance, that were outdated and not in demand. Hopefully things are different now. Otherwise, get your act together and work with industry. Ideally, smartcity jobs are acquired by smart-maltese, not smart foreigners.