Digital skills have become indispensable in our daily lives, extending beyond the realm of professions that traditionally rely on them. Whether you're a student navigating the educational landscape or a CEO steering a company's strategic course, digital literacy is now an expected facet of essential life skills.

Enter the eSkills Malta Foundation, established with the explicit goal of meeting the rising demand for digital skills while simultaneously advancing the IT sector. Guiding this initiative is Chief Administrator Carmel Cachia, a seasoned industry veteran boasting over 40 years of experience.

“My motivation for joining the foundation stems from a desire to contribute at a national level." While acknowledging the project-driven nature of the ICT industry, he underscores the societal value inherent in this role. "The Foundation is a coalition of representatives coming from government, industry and education, and everyone comes together to contribute and to propel the country’s digital skills development,” Carmel starts off.

The role comes with a broad remit that includes multiple elements, each revolving around furthering strategic leadership to help the Foundation reach its national goals. The process ensures that due importance is given to a healthy stakeholder engagement, including from the industry, educational and community sectors.

“The Foundation’s mandates are flexible due to the very nature of the industry. While we’re a government entity, we’re also recognised at EU level, and we collaborate with other member countries when it comes to all things related to digital skills. I am proud to say that we are one of the most active organisations across the EU, and, moreover, we are also extremely agile. In this case, perhaps our smaller size helps,” Carmel says.

He explains that the Foundation’s priorities include advising Government and relevant stakeholders on matters related to eSkills policies while contributing to the expansion of ICT educational programmes and related formative initiatives. On a tangible level, it also leads an ICT professionalism development programme and international and local campaigns related to eSkills, while contributing to the capacity-building of the ICT education community.

“One of the biggest challenges we face as a Foundation is the sheer rapidity with which the technology landscape changes. Year after year, the landscape of society, industry, and educational skills prerequisites undergoes constant evolution. Sometimes it can be disruptive, such as with the democratisation of AI. Although it’s been around for a while, it is only recently that it has become widely accessible to all and this has led to a fast evolution in the way everyone operates,” Carmel explains.

The challenge, he adds, is to make sure the country keeps up with the evolution, including informing citizens nationwide. Moreover, although reactions need to be fast, they also must maintain a high standard of ethics.

“You need to maximise the use of technologies while ensuring everyone is operating within an ethical framework. This isn’t always easy to achieve, because the sector isn’t like a traditional one where you have an unchanging code of ethics. Every new development brings with it ethical, sustainable and safety considerations, and this is where the Foundation’s role gains even stronger importance,” Carmel says.

We return to the importance of digital skills even outside of the ICT profession itself, and it is easy to see how passionate Carmel is about this.

“This need for digital knowledge doesn’t depend on what you do in society, or which sector you work in, or even whether you are a worker or not. Such knowledge is essential to everyone in day-to-day life and I consider it as one of the main responsibilities of the Foundation to pave the road to make such widespread digital literacy possible,” he says.

He is a firm believer in the fact that the education system must continue its transformation as swiftly as possible, at least as far as digital skills are concerned, and these need to be taught as early as kindergarten, seamlessly integrated within the learning and teaching systems.

“This doesn’t mean giving a toddler a mobile phone to play with mindlessly. Actual skills should be the focus, and we need to foster this kind of thinking.”

On the ICT professional front, he acknowledges that there is a dearth of actual ICT practitioners, and that this has now become an urgent target. While the number of ICT specialists across Europe is currently hovering just under the 10 million, the EU is targeting to increase this to 20 million by 2023. Although in 2022 Malta is ranked fifth in the Digital Economy and Society index, Eurostat figures for Malta show 4.7 per cent ICT specialists as a percentage of total employment. This is above the EU average, but we need to do more.

“The year 2023 looks brighter for Malta, and it measured brightly in the latest Digital Decade targets. The challenge is to develop more specialists via an alternative educational pathway as the current mentality is still that one needs a degree to prosper in ICT. This means that there’s a considerable time lag.”

The culture shock of switching from studies to the actual workplace is another reality. Carmel explains that the Foundation tries to mitigate this by organising regular extra-curricular activities, such as Digital Skills Bootcamps that help students get used to putting theory into practice. He also emphasises the importance of introducing more apprenticeship degrees in the education system that can offer a coordinated approach on how to place students during their studies.

“As things stand, the top students get snapped up for summer placements by the industry, which is understandable. Average and lower-than-average students end up taking a summer job that is barely related to their studies. But the reality is that average students are also important. We don’t only need the highest performers. So we need to find a system which works for every student that helps the country achieve this.”

On the educational front, the Foundation itself does run courses and webinars. It is also in process of developing a digital skills and jobs platform that will be a hub for everything related to digital education, funding, opportunities, best practices, events and intelligence reports that are happening in Malta and across the EU. This is an EU co-funded project that will be integrated within a similar EU platform to maximise all available opportunities across Europe.

In the meantime, the Foundation continues to make strides in the journey towards strengthening the development of ICT professionalism, using the EU’s IT Professionalism Framework as a beacon that lays down the various parameters required of professionals in competencies.

“ICT practitioners need to develop further into ICT professionals, by belonging to an ICT profession, and we have initiated a long-term initiative on this. We need to make IT good for society,” says Carmel.

Carmel finishes by saying that as CEO of the Foundation, he wishes to “see everyone in Malta become well-equipped and knowledgeable when it comes to using technology for our daily benefit. It pains me when I still see people who cannot operate an ATM comfortably or functional mobile apps. If this take-up of digital skills is my legacy, then I will be satisfied.”