SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF JUSTICE AND LOCAL COUNCILS DR. AUSTIN GATT DURING A SEMINAR ORGANISED BY MEGABYTE REGARDING ORACLE 9 – ST JULIANS – 14.2.2002

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is an honour to be invited to open this seminar, organised by one of the major players in the local ICT-industry and presenting the product of an established multi-national such as Oracle. Obviously, I will not intend to indulge in a technical evaluation of any of the products you will be considering today.

On the other hand, in my short address today, I will be giving an overview of the strategic electronic policy that the Government, is actively pursuing through my Ministry and also to outline the direction and policy lines that Government has adopted in its mission to strengthen the Maltese ICT-industry.

As you may be aware, Government is handling electronic policy on two parallel planes – the attainment of a first class information society and the implementation of the e-Government programme.

Transforming Malta into a first class information society is a top priority on this Government’s agenda. At its highest level, Government recognised that the clear benefits and limitless opportunities that can be derived from such an attainment, are large enough to merit its undivided attention. Synonymous to this importance, last year, Government established the eMalta Commission and tasked it to drive the identification, promotion and coordination of the initiatives required for the attainment of an information society and economy in Malta.

In doing this, the Commission has adopted a broad approach within a sound consultation framework, bringing together in one multi-dimensional forum, for the first time, a record number of players in the ICT sector so that together we develop and implement what is strategically advantageous for our society and economy.

In its encompassing mission, the Commission has determined a strategic plan based on six strategic thrusts and has also devised a set of clear objectives, which it aims to attain by 2003.

In line with my belief that policy is useless without practice and tangible results, the Commission coupled to this plan a clear set of targets backed by a string of sound programmes and initiatives that will contribute to the overall attainment of the objectives.

As you surely know, my Ministry is also responsible for the implementation of the e-Government programme in Malta – an exciting opportunity that will lend us the opportunity to factually demonstrate to the Maltese citizens, the tangible benefits that the information and communication technologies can offer to improve their quality of life and the administration of their businesses.

Strategically, we are addressing this initiative on a number of inter-linked parallel implementation streams. Primarily, Government is actively pursuing to identify an international ICT player to enter into a long-term strategic partnership agreement for the design, development, implementation and potential operation of a world-class seamless e-Government model.

Following its international request for proposals in March 2001, Government received 58 submissions from 44 international and 14 local ICT-players. Following an in-depth detailed technical evaluation, Government has identified a consortium with which it will start the relevant bi-lateral technical evaluation, which should pave the road for the negotiation stage.

Acknowledging the fact that the potential strategic partnership will be a long-term arrangement which will span for a minimum of seven years, Government intends to leverage on the huge investment it has made in the last 10 years to bring the benefits of e-Government to the citizens as early as this year. In fact a substantial number of electronic transaction-based services such as the renewal of a driving license, the submission and payment of an income tax return and the application for an examination, will be placed on line by end 2002. This will definitely serve as an invaluable and crucial channel that will mobilise the citizens’ expectations and the public perceptions of e-Government.

Linked to this is the implementation of the Government portal, which will serve as the principal point of entry to all Government information and services. The portal will also re-dimension the way the public perceives Government from a silo-based structure to a service-cluster approach that cuts across the organisational boundaries which exist in the public sector. To complement this, in the coming months, Government will also be launching two essential components that will service the entire e-Government programme – the payment gateway and the registration and authentication mechanism.

The former will enable Government to securely receive payments in electronic form via the Internet, hence making technologically possible the implementation of services, which require secure on-line payment. The registration and authentication mechanism being pursued by Government builds on the provisions of the existing eCommerce legislation and will provide an accessible and secure digital signature mechanism that will enable citizens to identify themselves with Government when transacting with it on-line.

On another parallel policy stream, my Ministry is aggressively working on the implementation of local e-Government, that is, the delivery of e-Government services through the front offices of our 68 Local Councils. This initiative will be the principal contributor towards the eradication of the digital divide and its transformation into a digital opportunity. The policy has been agreed with the Local Councils Association and very soon will be offered to the Local Councils for implementation.

The final stream is the exciting development of the m-Government initiative, whereby Government is working with the two mobile telephony companies to be in a position to offer a string of electronic public services via mobile technology. Statistics suggest that in Malta there are over 230,000 mobile telephone lines, 65% of which use SMS technology in an exceptionally frequent manner. This makes the mobile phone a central service delivery channel which Government aims at placing amongst its top implementation priorities for the e-Government programme.

It is relevant to note that we are not adopting a lame duck approach, walking in a technological oblivion of stand-alone sites. We state up-front, that we don’t know everything and that we want to listen to all the relevant stakeholders in this field. In line with our wide-open consultation policy, we have already conducted a 1000-strong survey amongst the citizens to benchmark and identify the citizen’s perceptions on the implementation of electronic policy. In addition to this, at the moment, we are also conducting a similar survey amongst 350 local businesses from various sectors and of varying magnitude. We are, and certainly committed to remain, faithful to our sound consultation-policy and the effective moulding of the programme implementation. I assure you that the survey reports are not monuments on our shelves but an integral clog in our e-Government implementation engine.

I would like to close my address by expressing Government’s outright commitment to induce the growth of the ICT-industry, which will invariably lead us to the window of golden opportunities both in terms of economic growth and in terms of knowledge-transfer. I am sure that if the Government and the private industry jointly trust in the capability of the Maltese human resource in this sector, we will all achieve our congruent goals.

Thank you.