The culture of open standards is to be disseminated within government and the local ICT industry, Malta's governmental Information Technology Agency (MITA) explained last week. The institute's open source vision was called a 'most important policy document' by senior government adviser, the month before.
Adopting open standards has a number of benefits, such as reduced vendor lock-in, easier integration of IT systems and improved access to public information, writes Noel Cuschieri, enterprise architect MITA, in a letter to Malta Business Weekly, published on 1 December.
Referring to new procurement policies for government organisations, Cushieri writes that MITA's wants to make sure vendors can fairly compete on the feature set, price and performance levels of their products.
"Such a competitive environment will also ensure that government obtains the best value from its investments. Such initiatives are important in the agency’s goal of establishing a more open and effective government both in theory and in practice."
The month before, Fr Peter Serracino Inglott, a well-known and senior government adviser, in an interview with the Times of Malta, on 21 November, complimented MITA on its open source policies.
"For obvious reasons the MITA vision dwells on the technological and economic advantages of using Open Source software as compared with the other more normally commercial types", Fr Peter told the newspaper. "However, I myself am enthusiastic in my support of the project because of the moral and political implications of the choice of this family of technologies since they are based on the recognition that knowledge is the most important part of the Common Heritage of Mankind."
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