Editorial

Malta's ambition to become a centre of excellence in ICT-related services by 2015 faces serious threats that could lead to only a partial realisation of the goals it has set out to achieve.

It was, therefore, interesting to hear the Investment Minister spell out some of his government's plans to energise the country's national IT strategies.

Many consider the shortage of qualified human resources as the most serious bottleneck in the implementation of the ICT strategy. Minister Austin Gatt made an impassioned appeal to IT companies in the private sector to "collaborate more with the University of Malta and Mcast" to eliminate the bottleneck.

Such collaboration would presumably aim to optimise the use of scarce resources to train more students wanting to study for ICT qualifications. It would also guarantee better deployment of the students once they qualify. There is no doubt that a lot of catching up needs to be done to ensure that both the training efforts and the implementation of ICT projects are successful.

It is a sad reality that both Mcast and the University are encountering serious difficulties in recruiting staff to train those wanting to study for an ICT-related career. Rather than dilute standards, which would be a self-defeating strategy, the country needs to exploit the synergies that exist between academics and the business operators in the ICT sector. Cooperation rather than competition is the name of the game.

The upgrading of the identity card system through the use of electronic chips to store the personal data of individuals is an exciting development that needs to be followed up with focused political commitment.

The government's IT agency, Mita, also has ambitious plans to weave ICT technology into the fabric of public administration. Various initiatives have been announced and most of them make good sense. The introduction of an e-learning system will go some way to easing pressure on the strained human resources that are so vital to deliver this learning.

The benefits of such initiatives for ordinary people should be immense. Bureaucracy and waiting times to get necessary services from ministries should be greatly reduced if the handling of official information is streamlined through good data management. The setting up of a professional body for ICT to regulate the industry and introduce an official code of conduct should also underpin the effectiveness of such changes.

Recurrent and capital expenditure to install and maintain a good IT infrastructure are massive. Moreover, capital expenditure in such infrastructure has a notoriously short useful life. It was, therefore, very encouraging to hear that the present IT platform that has served the administration's current IT system for some years is about to be upgraded and modernised to "focus more on citizens' needs".

The success of these ambitious plans can be guaranteed with proper project management, robust specifications aimed at choosing ICT systems that provide the best customer service in the most secure way and an unwavering political will to see these projects delivered to the end within budget and on time.

This is achievable if all stakeholders work in unison.