Malta has placed 12th in the digital agenda scoreboard of the European Union out of 28 countries.
The EU said that in Connectivity Malta is above the EU average. All Maltese households are covered by fixed broadband and all networks provide at least 30 Mbps. The take up of fixed broadband is well above EU average. By the end of 2014, the majority of consumers migrated to fast broadband services.
Nevertheless, Malta needs to improve its performance in mobile, the EU survey found. Despite the fact, that 4th generation (LTE) services were launched here, the take-up of mobile broadband is below EU average. This may be the outcome of the limited harmonisation of spectrum bands, the EU said.
At the same time, Malta is below the average on digital skills.
Malta falls into the cluster of medium‑performance countries, where it performs slightly below the cluster average.
“In order to fully develop its digital economy and society, Malta needs to engage its citizens to use the Internet. This is Malta's weakest indicator and presents a lower percentage of regular Internet users (70%) than the EU (75%). Moreover, a quarter of the Maltese population has never used the internet,” the survey report says.
“Malta needs to address its digital skills gap. Digital skills are nowadays needed in every corner of the workforce, and despite the fact that 55% of Maltese population possess at least basic digital skills, this value is below the EU average (59%).
“Additionally, STEM (Science, Technology and Mathematics) graduates play an important role in exploiting the opportunities offered by digital technologies in businesses and in this indicator Malta is one of the worst of the 28 EU Member States, with a rank of 24.”
With regard to usage, the survey report says that Maltese Internet users engage in a broad range of online activities. They read news online (74%), listen to music, watch films and play games online (56%), use the Internet to communicate via voice or video calls (39%) or through social networks (72%). For all of these activities, engagement among Maltese is higher than the EU average. However, regarding the use of video on demand, Malta's value of 9.5% is largely below the EU average of 41%.
However, DESI results also show no increase in video calls and in the use of social networks, online banking and online shopping from 2013 to 2014.
“Overcoming this trend is an important step for Malta, since a digital economy is partly fueled by its citizens’ consumption in the online channel.”
BUSINESSES
On businesses, the report says a true digital economy is one where businesses take full advantage of the possibilities and benefits offered by digital technologies, to improve their efficiency and productivity, as well as to reach costumers and realise sales. To that end, Malta still has a large possibility of improvement.
The adoption of digital technologies is an important driver of labour productivity growth and needs to be strengthened. On eCommerce turnover (3.5%) and the use of eInvoices (8.8%), Malta is below the EU average.
On the bright side, more and more Maltese SMEs sell online (16%) and the percentage of SMEs selling online to other EU member states (12%) is high.
E-GOVERNMENT
Malta scores at the top of the ranks in the availability and sophistication of eGovernment services. However, use by citizens does not match the ambition of the supply side: with 27% of internet users fully engaging with the public authorities, Malta scores well below EU average, probably because of the level of digital skills in the population.
Moreover, Malta scores low in making government data available. Finally, Malta faces a key challenge in online public services mostly in the area of eHealth.