Mary Mulcahy from the ECDL Foundation in Ireland is giving a talk on the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at The Victoria Hotel, Sliema. The event, organised by the Computer Society of Malta, is open to the public.

The ECDL is a certificate of competence in the use of PCs and common office application packages, such as word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. In the business world it ensures that staff are qualified to make good use of their computers, improving employee productivity and reducing support costs.

It has been adopted as a corporate standard by a number of commercial enterprises as well as government bodies such as the NHS in the UK, which is rolling it out to its 1.2 million employees.

Ms Mulcahy will be talking about the rise of the ECDL and will present case studies where companies have embraced the ECDL as a benchmark and launched programmes to ensure all their staff are properly qualified.

Ms Mulcahy is the Business Development Manager at the ECDL Foundation, which oversees the management of the ECDL qualification worldwide. She is being hosted by the Computer Society of Malta, which has applied to the ECDL Foundation to represent the ECDL in Malta.

The CSM hopes to take over this function from the British Computer Society, which has promoted the ECDL in Malta through a special agreement with the foundation.

The ECDL has been available in Malta for the past two years, and was first introduced here through the Computing Services Centre at the University of Malta.

It has been gaining in popularity since, and Malta now has 10 accredited testing centres. Over the past six months it has taken a leap forward, since the University adopted it as a prerequisite for its PGCE course, and the public service included it as a requirement for its entrance examination. The ECDL has from this year been incorporated into the syllabus of State secondary schools.