A platform to enable third parties to provide government services is being planned by the Malta IT agency, chairman Claudio Grech said this morning.

Speaking during a Mimcol conference “ICT - Enabled sustainability in ‘smart’ cities”, Mr Grech defended the smart island concept saying this was not a political gimmick.

Had it been so, large companies such as IBM and Cisco would not be investing in Malta.

Mr Grech said that Malta should not be complacent and wait for ultra high speed fibre optic infrastructure to become the norm before adopting them. It should act soon if it wanted to be competitive.

Technology Minister Austin Gatt said the concept of smart island was based on three pillars, namely hardware, software and human resources.

Malta, he said, was at the forefront in the EU for the sophistication and proliferation of e-government services.

But, he said, there could not be a smart economy without investment in hardware. In this field, the EU was far behind other economies, including Japan.

As for software, Malta was more interested in results rather than how the software worked. The government was no longer issuing specifications for the software it wanted, focusing more on the end result.

The smart grid, to be used for electricity, for example, would give the people information on bills and on how to use energy more efficiently, integrating ICT with sustainability.

The transport reform would also include a transport information system making digital information available to users for a better service.

But the most important pillar of a smart economy, Dr Gatt said was human resources. It was much easier laying a cable or buying software than convincing a government clerk to change the way things are done.