This was announced by Austin Gatt, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications, who spoke at yesterday’s launch of the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA)’s strategic plan for the next three years.
MITA has been appointed by the government as the prime agency for propagating information and the country’s ICT (Information and Communications Technology) policies.
As the government’s ICT agency, MITA supplies its services to the government, but also has a significant number of commercially based agreements with private sector companies. MITA chairman Claudio Grech said the new strategy was concluded after seven months of intensive discussions, in which the country’s main requirements and needs were evaluated and assessed.
Mr Grech said that MITA’s position over the past few years has become more influential, with around 320 employees now working within the agency. Furthermore, MITA receives roughly three million e-mails per day, has over 14,000 Internet accounts and over four million webpage hits per week.
Mr Grech said that MITA’s short term plans include sustaining the establishment of a national ICT professional body, as well as setting up a national skills alliance and an e-skills competence framework.
“The successful implementation of this national strategy will improve the local ICT ecosystem, taking it to the next level of sophistication, and it will enable Malta to be ahead of its time in policy making for the digital age, nurturing the country’s global reputation as an advanced information society and one of the European ICT pioneers,” said Mr Grech.
Minister Gatt said that MITA must do its utmost to be pro-active in ICT if Malta is to achieve its goals of Vision 2015.
“Furthermore, innovation depends on collaboration between the University of Malta and MCAST and we thus encourage investors to hire graduates who specialise in the sector of ICT as otherwise, the government’s plan in encouraging students to take up studies in this area will have all been to no avail.
“Nevertheless, we cannot but be satisfied with what we have done already. Malta currently ranks second behind Austria with regard to proficiency and sophistication in the ICT sector. The government’s short term plans include the setting up of electronic passports and ID cards, as well as electronic patient records, where staff can access a patient’s previous history at hospital.
“We note that Malta, in order to keep up with technological advancement, needs to keep investing in education, which is why we have allocated around e26 million which are ear marked as smart learning, with the installation of interactive whiteboards in the coming weeks being the first of short term projects to be installed.
“These are exciting times for Malta, but in such a time of transition, we have no option but to invest. Failure to do so is not an option,” said Dr Gatt.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Scott Grech
Quelle/Source: The Malta Independent Online, 04.11.2009
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
