MITA Strategy for 2024-2026: A brief outlook

MITA has launched its strategy for the next three years, based upon the vision of ‘leveraging the power of digital’.  This is the strategic pursuit that MITA intends to follow, in line with the accompanying mission of ‘facilitating the modernisation of the public administration through technology direction and digital solutions’.

Essentially, the vision and mission build upon MITA’s core competencies and expertise, in digital services and in the public administration, that it has accrued over the past thirty-three years since its establishment. In doing so, it is keeping in view of major regulatory digital developments being enacted by the European Union in areas including Artificial Intelligence, information and cyber security, data and data governance, and in the realm of cross-border interoperability of public services.

Three domains of focus shall be the underlying enablers for the vision and mission to be attained.

Two of the domains - ‘strengthening the agency’ and ‘enhancing the digital infrastructure’ are largely agency-focused. However, both domains are essential in ensuring that MITA can effectively and successfully perform in its third domain as a ‘partner to government in the digitalisation process’.

Therefore, MITA needs to ensure that its people, its processes, its technology investments and its underlying data are in line with its overall strategic pursuit. The actions covering the domain ‘strengthening the agency’ are specifically intended towards this objective. They shall involve further focus on the professional and personal wellbeing of its employees as well as developments in its processes covering its operations, administration, procurement, communication and the further utilisation of EU funds. The actions pertaining to the domain ‘enhancing the digital infrastructure’ shall in turn focus on the government’s digital backbone, with further investments for scalability of the government’s digital network along with the agency’s data centre, platforms and enabling services. Through the engagement of academic and practitioner expertise locally and overseas, as well as through experimental and pilot projects, MITA shall seek to test for and apply innovation as necessary.

Above all, MITA shall be focusing its efforts on a number of actions which cover the third domain ‘partner to the government in the digitalisation process’. Primarily, the agency shall be implementing EU, national and/or public administration strategic and legal digital requirements falling under its responsibility. Furthermore, MITA shall be providing the technical direction and consultation in areas of governance including the Public Administration’s digital policy framework, prioritisation and maximisation of government digital investment and government enterprise architecture, among others.

The agency shall also support the public administration in the implementation of the latter’s digital transformation initiatives and modernisation of its business solutions. Apart from reviewing its service portfolio, MITA shall also seek to consolidate its focus on stakeholder engagement and client-centricity, in line with its overall strategic direction for service delivery.

All such activity would be futile without a thorough consideration by MITA of all aspects of the cyber security ecosystem on a governmental and national scale. This is an area where MITA has been actively contributing both through technological and organisational investments as well as on an educational and awareness aspect over a number of years. This new strategy shall keep up MITA’s momentum in such a critical and important aspect within the digital realm.

Indeed, MITA’s role from a strategic point of view shall not limit itself to the public administration alone or to a national scale in key digital matters, but it shall also seek to undertake a more active participatory within the relevant EU and international digital-related bodies and institutions on behalf of the government. In public service delivery alone, in collaboration with the public administration, the agency shall seek to enable a more seamless, efficient and effective public service approach through interoperability of related digital solutions and data on a national as well as on a cross-border scale. Such a feat does not simply involve technological considerations but also calls for close collaboration with legal, organisational as well as semantic efforts needed on a national and on an EU cross-border scale.

The evolution in the digital world is an ongoing one and remains an interesting one to venture into and modernise accordingly at a technological, organisational and cultural level. Through its new strategy, MITA is taking the cue and taking a leading role in supporting the Maltese public administration in its holistic digital transformation journey.

The MITA Strategy 2024 – 2026 may be downloaded through the MITA website www.mita.gov.mt.

By Dr Keith Cilia Debono