Malta - National eSkills Strategy 2022-2025

The Maltese National eSkills Strategy 2022-2025 aims at the attainment and availability of digital skills, now and in the future, whilst keeping in view the domestic national, sectoral and specialist strategies and initiatives affecting the digital skills domain. It aims to build further upon the foundations laid through the previous National eSkills Strategy and takes stock of the opportunities and challenges currently being faced by Malta in digital skills and competencies. Moreover, the Strategy aligns with European Union’s Path to the Digital Decade, highlighted targets to be reached by all Member States by 2030.

The Strategy encompasses several principles, which include a comprehensive and inclusive approach to all cohorts of society and the economy, accompanied by education, awareness, multi-stakeholder engagement and alignment to relevant strategic direction. The Strategy has a four-dimensional model that includes the goals, outcomes, strategic pillars, and common governance enablers.

Strategic pillars and objectives

The strategic pillars remain the same as in the previous Strategy, which also corresponds to those identified by the European Coalition for Digital Skills and Jobs, namely, Education, Society, the Workforce, and the ICT professionals, whilst endeavouring to reach the following goals:

• Improving further digital capabilities.
• Promoting inclusive, ethical and responsible use of digital technologies.
• Promoting a promising career in digital.
• Positively contributing to the digital economy through increased availability of the necessary current and future skills.

Expected results 

Through such goals, the National eSkills Strategy 2022-2025 will have an impact on the following outcomes:

• Society acquiring more digital awareness and becoming increasingly confident in the productive use of digital.
• Public Administration pursuing its digital transformation, and its online public service delivery in line with the Public Service Strategy.
• Enterprises areincreasingly willing and able to adopt digital transformation as a means for them to thrive in an increasingly competitive digital world.
• The educational system is evolving further at all levels to ensure readiness for the needs of current and future digital skills.
• Having more ICT professionals available in the local labour market.

The four strategic pillars share several common governance enablers needed to ensure the effectiveness of the Strategy and its implementation.  They relate to Collaboration, leadership and shared responsibility, benchmarking, funding, and focused strategic alignment.

Each of the strategic pillars, and potentially some of the governance measures, identified various actions and recommendations for implementing the Strategy.  Where relevant, several actions refer to those already proposed in other existing strategies to ensure coordination, alignment and avoidance of duplication of effort by the various stakeholders involved.  Nonetheless, the proposed actions or recommendations are not final as they may need to be reviewed further, depending on contemporary changing social, economic and technological developments.

The National eSkills Strategy 2022-2025 is the current strategy, and it builds on the solid foundations set in the previous National eSkills Strategy 2019-2021.