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The Malta Independent | Thursday 17 March 2016
The Malta Independent ICT Feature
Consultations on the Green Paper for a National Cyber Security Strategy
Keith Cilia-Debono B.Sc. (Maths & Computing), M.B.A. (Henley), D.B.A. (Maastricht)
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n early 2015, the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) was entrusted with the development of a National Cyber Security Strategy (NCSS). A Green Paper for an NCSS was subsequently articulated and publicly launched on 30th October 2015 by the Minister for the Economy, Investment and Small
Business, Dr. Christian Cardona, thus paving the way for the consultation process. The Green Paper was subject to public, on-line feedback by means of http://mita.gov.mt/ncss and http://www.konsultazzjoni.gov .mt till mid February 2015. A series of consultation sessions covering a number of social and economic sectors, involving representations from the public sector, the private sector and civil society are underway and are to be followed by a public consultation event. The Green Paper addresses a number of dimensions, namely governance, legislation, regulation, risk management, awareness and education; all of which call for joint responsibility and an ongoing, strategic and coordinated effort on a national scale to address cyber security.
MITA Communications and PR Team
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n Saturday 12th March eight startups came to pitch their ideas on how they would use Earth Observation and geo-spatial data from the European Commission’s Copernicus Project to solve a problem in the Maltese market. Three startups were selected and awarded a preseed fund of €22,000. A series of consultation sessions for the Green Paper for a National Cyber Security Strategy
Dr. Keith Cilia Debono is a Consultant with MITA ICT Policy & Cyber Strategy Governance, Risk & Compliance Department.
Three startups receive €22,000 seed fund for ideas using satellite data Alexander Borg
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aturday 12th March was a special afternoon at SmartCity. Eight startups came to pitch their ideas on how they would use Earth Observation and geo-spatial data from the European Commission’s Copernicus Project to solve a problem in the Maltese market. Three startups were selected and awarded a pre-seed fund of €22,000 which they would use to develop a prototype which they would test, deploy and eventually demonstrate as a beta version of a software product for later commercialisation. In reality the journey started in November 2015 when MITA, in collaboration with the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) and Eurisy, an NGO funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), decided to collaborate together to organise an app challenge, otherwise branded startAPP 2.0. ESA has a constellation of satellites which it calls sentinels
that orbit the planet taking radar and multi-spectral high-resolution images of the earth’s surface generating terabytes of freely available open data that can be used for a multitude of practical applications in diverse fields such as agriculture, oceanography, land surveying, maritime traffic, urban and environmental planning, forestry and many others. The startups would have to use some of these datasets to identify and define a problem they would address with a solution of their own conception and design. The app challenge was based on the innovation ecosystem accelerator programme being developed by the MITA Innovation Hub (MIH). The programme is, in a very small nutshell, a hands-on school for tech startups. Among many other things, the first phase contemplates a number of training seminars designed to support the startups to ideate and then pitch good quality proposals centred around the end user as the prime focus of the solution. And good quality proposals they did pitch on that gusty, rainy afternoon at SmartCity. These consisted of ideas on improving agriculture management, the modelling of urban planning impacts on solar panel modelling, traffic congestion, public transport, lost property, the transformation of satellite data for other uses and the measurement of land subsidence for preventive road network maintenance.
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The Malta Independent | Thursday 17 March 2016
In the end it was Ludoi with their traffic congestion app, AgriStat with their SaaS solution for winegrowers and the Find&Seek lost property platform for its potential disruptiveness that were selected to receive the MIH seed fund. These startups will now enter the second more intensive phase of the accelerator programme during which they will start designing and developing their prototype which they will test, rework and re-test iteratively for the local market. In parallel with all this work they will be trained, coached and mentored by tech entrepreneurs and business experts on how they can use their prototype as a launchpad for productising and ideally going global. Of course, only the very few will make it to achieve a million euro exit, but even if the startup founders actually get to the stage where they conceive, pitch and implement their idea, and in the process learn the ropes for becoming a tech entrepreneur, the objectives of the MIH are considered met. Regardless of whether the startup founders give it another try at starting up, or move back to employment in the industry, they will take their enterprising talent, newly gained specialisation and experience with them to their new pastures. Alex Borg is the manager of the MITA Innovation Hub based in SmartCity Malta.
covering a number of social and economic sectors, involving representations from the public sector, the private sector and civil society are underway and are to be followed by a public consultation event. All ICT Features are available on www.mita.gov.mt/ictfeature