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The Malta Independent | Thursday 21 April 2016
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The Malta Independent | Thursday 21 April 2016
MITA hosts European Association of Public ICT Providers council meeting
Alexander Borg
O
n 14th April, at its Data Centre in Santa Venera, MITA hosted a delegation of 13 members from the European Association of Public ICT Providers (EURITAS). The delegation, headed by CEO of the Federal Computing Centre of Austria – Bundesrechenzentrum (BRZ) and EURITAS President, Mr Roland Jabkowski, was welcomed by Parliamentary Secretary for Competitiveness and Economic Growth, Dr José Herrera, and MITA Executive Chairman, Mr Tony Sultana. EURITAS is a network of organisations that, similar to MITA, provide ICT services and projects to various regional, federal or state governments across Europe. Their aim is to exchange
The Malta Independent ICT Feature MITA Communications and PR Team
expertise and knowledge about ICT applied to public administration, and become the voice and network of public ICT service providers within Europe. The network enables its members to create better ICT services for European public administration, and ultimately to businesses and citizens of Europe. Based on such a vast and collective experience, it is able to cooperate with various stakeholders relevant to their business. EURITAS is recognised as an expert contact point on
matters concerning the application of ICTs in public administration in a trans-European context. It currently counts 12 member organisations from Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, but more members from Croatia, Portugal and the UK are soon expected to join. The association chose Malta to hold their tri-annual council meeting specifically to engage in talks with MITA for the purpose of studying the Maltese model of
ICT governance and service provision. The following day was then dedicated to discuss the association’s council meeting agenda. While both MITA and EURITAS members share the common mission of delivering ICT services of quality to public administration, there are differences: MITA goes one extra step as it is also responsible for ICT governance and policy in the public sector, taking on a pivotal role in coordinating the ICT planning
and budgetary process, and ensuring that investments are not duplicated, and policies and standards are consistent across all of government. Mr Jabkowski, in fact, stated: “what you have here in Malta in terms of ICT governance is what we what we’d like to achieve in our respective countries in two or three years time”. From the MITA perspective, Head of Business and Strategy, Mr Emanuel Darmanin, argued that “Malta’s main problem in meeting the de-
mands of implementing EUwide measures that stem from EU legislation and policy, are coping with their sheer scale. These often do not take into account Malta’s obvious limitations in terms of human and financial resources. Which is why we try, as much as possible, to consolidate and co-ordinate better our efforts by exploiting
our compactness and close networks. So collaborating with EURITAS is no doubt another way to consolidate and optimise our respective expertise and experiences”. The many themes discussed and explored for mutual collaboration included government cloud, egovernment shared services, smart use of data, mobility,
social media, joint participation in EU R&I projects and even startups. In May a delegation from the Danish ICT provider Statens IT will also be visiting MITA. Alexander Borg is a Consultant at MITA, and a member of the Digital Malta Strategy Action Team
O
n 14th April, at its Data Centre in Santa Venera, MITA hosted a delegation of 13 members from the European Association of Public ICT Providers (EURITAS). The delegation, headed by CEO of the Federal Computing Centre of Austria – Bundesrechenzentrum (BRZ) and EURITAS President, Mr Roland Jabkowski, was welcomed by Parliamentary Secretary for Competitiveness and Economic Growth, Dr José Herrera, and MITA Executive Chairman, Mr Tony Sultana.
The National Digital Strategy (2014 – 2020) sets a clear understanding of how Malta can become a digital economy and digital-enabled society. It focuses on three strategic themes: Citizen, Business and Government. As the country accelerates in this fast lane of technology, new challenges arise and the objective is to have all members of society on board this route towards a digitally enabled nation. All ICT Features are available on www.mita.gov.mt/ictfeature
Dr Therese Comodini Cachia EU eSkills Ambassador meets the eSkills Malta Foundation
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he eSkills Malta Foundation as the National Coordinator of a European wide eSkills campaign on Monday 18th April 2016 met with Dr Therese Comodini Cachia EU eSkills Ambassador. Present for the meeting on behalf of the Foundation were Charles Formosa – Chief Administrator, Carm Cachia – Executive Coordinator together with the designated administrators from the Malta Gaming Authority, Malta Enterprise, and Malta Communications Authority. The meeting
was held at the MITA Data Centre in Sta Venera. At the end of the meeting Dr Commodini
Cachia toured the hi-tech Centre’s facilities. The Digital Single Market and
the Digital education from early years up to Tertiary education were some of the topics discussed. It was agreed that the alignment of education should have no country frontiers or territories but it should be based on the global requirement. Improving ICT education is key to improving the supply of eSkilled
workers. This is in line with one of the Foundation’s objectives in implementing initiatives and actions with the aim of improving the local ICT educational offerings and respective capacity building in the ICT Education Community. Dr. Comodini Cachia stated that Malta has big potential and could be a front
runner in the Digital world. The EU eSkills ambassadors are involved in the current eSkills for Jobs 2016 campaign and contribute to its success by actively promoting the importance of eSkills in their respective countries. The goals of the campaign are to promote the EU eSkills strategy to reduce the
digital skills shortages, gaps and mismatches, and promote the adoption of best practices, tools and solutions, foster e-Leadership and ICT professionalism and facilitate the mobilisation of stakeholders and public authorities. The campaign aims to raise awareness of the need for citizens to improve their command
levels of unemployment in Europe. The eSkills for Jobs 2016 is aligned with the European Commission’s Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs initiative, an EUwide multi-stakeholder partnership helping to address a shortfall in the number of European citizens with ICT professional skills, and to exploit the employment creation potential of ICT and digital economy. of information and communication technology (ICT) skills for work. It is a response to the
growing demand for ICT skilled professionals which is currently not being met met, despite high
www.eskills.org.mt www.facebook.com/eskills4jobsMT/ www.facebook.com/ESkillsMalta/