MITA launches collaboration with UK based ICT company

Austin Gatt, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Communication has announced the collaboration between the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) and e-skills UK for the national license of the IT Professional Standards as the main standards on which local standards for IT talent are built.

Gatt said the Standards for ITalent, will provide companies with guidance on how to develop their employees' e-competences in a structured way to respond to changes in their business and the sectors in which they operate. 

Gatt said this collaboration will enable companies to hold target training and develop budgets to reduce any skill gaps which might be hindering their overall business development. 

"The Standards are also of relevance to students aspiring to become ICT professionals as they will be able to steer their studies to reach their desired professional standard. Furthermore, educational institutions will be able to churn out readily equipped ICT talent which the industry needs at that point in time," Gatt said.

Austin Gatt expressed his support for the adoption of such standards, stating that ICT-skills have in fact become a core component of Malta's strategy to promote "new skills for new jobs".

The Minister stressed the importance of continuous investment in strategies and processes enabling the nurturing of more and better qualified e-skilled professionals. "The absence of a clear set of standards will lead to inefficiencies in the growth and utilisation of the current and prospective ICT talent pool.  Therefore the investment in the Standards for ITalent marks a significant step towards augmenting the ICT profession," Gatt said.

MITA Chairperson, Claudio Grech who recently announced his intentions to step down as MITA chief said that this initiative falls under the objective of the Agency's Human Capital and will lead to clearly define the e-competences required for the fulfilment of the various ICT-related job categories in the industry by having an official set of Maltese ICT occupational standards and e-skill guidelines.

"These standards are a tool that adds value to the current economic climate, where businesses expect their talent, their human resources and their line-managers to make the best of their sometimes limited resources.  The Standards for ITalent are an extremely important management tool enabling businesses to nurture and retain valuable human resources," Grech said.  

Two senior officials from e-Skills UK, the sector skills council for business and information technology in the UK, were also present for the launch.  Dean Cassar, who is the Deputy CEO for e-Skills UK and Nigel Payne who is the Project Director for the same institution, shared practices on the use and benchmarking of Standards and how these can be used to further nurture home-grown ICT talent in Malta to help strengthen the ICT profession and increase the country's competitiveness globally. 

MITA said that thanks to this initiative, government is investing in a base-model that will allow the local industry and educational players to contextualise and mould a set of Standards for ICT competencies. 

MITA announced the standards will be used for the first time in Malta by six local companies including MITA itself, ICT Solutions, Bank of Valletta, Computime, Exigy and Crimsonwing.

MITA said these companies will be using the standards in designing role/job profiles and descriptions, recruitment processes, performance management and devising training plans.

E-skills UK, who have years of experience working with blue-chip companies who also use these Standards, will provide training and expertise for the companies in this learning curve and will hand-hold the local firms in deriving value-add from the Standards in their talent management.  The training will start in the first weeks of 2012.

The University of Malta and MCAST will also be contributing to the process of localising the Standards by reviewing a set of modules and translating/mapping these using the taxonomy tool in the Standards. Other private educational and training institutions are invited to express their interest to participate in the process of mapping learning outcomes to industry-defined competencies to ensure a comprehensive local exercise.