Speaking in parliament during the budget debate on the Ministry of IT and Public Investments, Mr Brincat said that although a lot had been done in Malta in the IT sector, there was still a lot more to do and the country must be quick off the mark if it was not to be overtaken by competing neighbours. The budget, Mr Brincat said, said very little about information technology. The government itself had told the EU that Malta's strength in IT was under-exploited. A survey on IT and commerce in Malta in 2002 showed that average business expenditure on IT was still very low, and some businessmen did not even knew about government incentives to use IT.
Several businessmen still considered e-commerce unsafe, and the government was still short of its aims to establish IT as one of six pillars for national advancement. What had become of plans to create a forum to identify avenues of help for business in the IT sector in coordination with the ETC?
It was to be acknowledged that changing the civil mindset about IT had been difficult. But on the other hand, what had happened to the plans mentioned so repeatedly by Minister Gatt, to take IT to town and village squares and to government services?
What developments were there with regard to the source code deal with Microsoft? Apparently the deal had not generated enough interest, but there may have been recent developments.
Mr Brincat said he felt that the venture capital fund for IT investments was being under-exploited.
The Labour MP said he could never justify piracy, but he wanted to refer to recent adverts in which Microsoft declared that the Students' Software Bundle needed genuine Windows operating systems to operate and the sale, installation and use of unlicensed Windows operating systems violated copyright law. The bundle was now being described as an upgrade, but it was never so described during the election campaign.
Wrong as it was, very few people bought a package with an original licence. Now shopowners were rightly demanding that licences should be bought before the software was installed. As a result costs were rising by up to Lm50 more than the figure mentioned by government during the electoral campaign, when the Microsoft package was used as an electoral gimmick.
Mr Brincat said the Ministry of IT was failing to coordinate IT investment in government bodies and departments. An example was the way the Malta Financial Services Authority was handling its IT programme, about which the minister knew nothing, as he had shown in reply to a parliamentary question.
Mr Brincat asked what had transpired from investigations on how the government's website had been hacked.
He felt the Malta Council for Science and Technology could do more than it was doing if given more funding. Not increasing funding would be shortsighted if Malta wanted to be innovative and creative and regain the competitiveness it was losing.
Malta should change its ways of thinking and operating. Europe 2005 was an exemplary roadmap on how to stimulate an effective share in IT society. The country should be ready to face the challenges, but preparation should be made in good time and with proper consultation of the sectors involved.
The government should pronounce itself on what its plans were for MITTS. Were there any plans to downsize it? Labour was not against change, but Dr Gatt should say what he meant by the 'deep restructuring' he had mentioned on a local radio programme.
It did not make sense for MITTS to have as its chairman the same person who was drawing up the government's IT strategy through CIMU, which was part of the Office of the Prime Minister. CIMU's role was to establish technical standards for government information systems, while MITTS's part was to operate these systems. Even if the two had the same CEO, they were not on the same wavelength.
MITTS was to be congratulated for recently winning an award for its human resources strategy, but its workforce was demotivated by the lack of direction from the government.
What was holding the government back from giving this direction?
Parliament had recently been told that there was a disaster recovery plan to cover various sectors, but no mention had been made on health, customs, VAT, inland revenue or social security applications. Were the other sectors more important than public health, social security and revenue?
An exercise was said to have been done to evaluate the impact of XP implementation on the hardware in use by government departments. But this exercise had been hurriedly done before the elections and had not addressed important security issues raised by the program's vulnerability.
In fact the XP implementation had been slowed down.
It was not yet clear if the government would be going for built-in-house applications or others bought off the shelf. A serious problem was brewing because an IT system the Customs Division had bought off the shelf from Denmark was already giving problems in the installation phase. One wondered what would happen when the system went live for public use.
But it was now too late to put the mistake right, and Customs would be working with a system that was neither secure nor efficient.
Concluding his speech, Mr Brincat suggested that core and strategic systems should be built and maintained in-house, thus cutting down on dependence on non-government entities. Government sites should be hosted on the MITTS framework to reduce the possibility of hacking, of which there had probably been more cases than had been reported in parliament.
IT Minister Gatt said a silent revolution was under way in the area of information technology, and this would eventually change the face of the country.
The budget for this sector incorporated a complex vote of Lm13.5 million on IT together with an additional Lm2 million spread on other votes, resulting in more than Lm15 million being invested in the sector.
He said that 50 per cent of homes in Malta had an internet connection. Some 4,000 people followed Myweb courses last year and another 2,000 were to be trained this year; there was a free internet service at every local council, a web phone in every locality, and an e-mail address was given to all those who wanted it.
ECDL had been introduced as a subject at secondary level, and Microsoft packages were sold to students at Lm10 instead of Lm500. Special training on computer fraud was given to the police.
All these were major achievements which were only brought about because there was a vision. Nearly all targets which had been set were reached. Those that were not reached was because of bureaucracy in the civil service.
Dr Gatt said that the only certainty in the sector was constant change. Malta's good reputation could easily be lost if it opted for routes which were not suitable for Malta.
Dr Gatt said there was a tendency to opt for old models to be resorted to, such as centralised planning, small empires and the silo mentality. Many departments, for example, were persisting in using their own databases instead of the central government database. Such a mentality had to change. Another problem was that instead of utilising IT to reduce new jobs some departments used it to employ more people.
For the country to progress, ICT in government and the public service, IT in business, IT in the private sector and the information society had to move together.
Progress in IT was not registered by the amount of hardware installed, it was the software which was relevant. And there had to be a balance between developing and buying software.
MITTS had, for example, developed a system on human resources, when there were so many models on which to work.
The objective, the minister said, should be what the client was to get and saving money through integration, rather than having a nice website.
Dr Gatt said he believed in the integration of the state system and the deployment by the private sector in the national system. This could be linked to programmes aimed at expanding information society and motivating the private sector.
He was working on an initiative aimed at linking the private with the public sectors to get more broadband into homes. But unfortunately broadband was being used more for VOIP rather than IT.
Another project aimed to use Enemalta's power grid for computer data.
Turning to MITTS and CIMU, Dr Gatt said that a lot of progress had been made but there were still many problems, such as duplication of resources and the silo mentality. MITTS had grown out of all proportion and was too centralised. It had 280 employees and 33 per cent of its financial costs went on administration.
He agreed with Mr Brincat that there should not be a distinction between MITTS, CIMU and e-government. One had to look at new ways even in ICT and have the courage to change even at MITTS.
Turning to plans on e and m government, Dr Gatt said that the government was still stuck on the award of an R & A contract.
A tender was issued 14 months ago but this was stuck at a contracts committee level. As soon as a system administrator was appointed, the country would be able to go ahead with the system, which would enable digital and fingerprint identification for everyone.
This would open the doors to a gamut of services including car licenses, VAT services and social services. A number of other services were planned including e-health.
Dr Gatt regretted that in e-commerce, the private sector was still lagging behind.
This year, he said, his ministry would be working with businesses and the Parliamentary Secretariat for the Self-Employed to encourage businessmen to utilise e-commerce facilities.
If the private sector did not grow, the government would have failed.
Quelle: The Times of Malta, 13.12.2003
