Chairman’s Statement

David Spiteri Gingell

The focus in 2004 was directed primarily towards five thrusts: (i) incrementally moving towards the core business focus of management of the infrastructure; management of designated strategic applications; management of projects, change and implementation; and management of information security; (ii) the delivery of work that is of a high quality and that meets our clients’ expectations; (iii) the rationalisation of costs and overheads; (iv) the continued upgrading of the ICT infrastructure environment; and (v) the continued investment in knowledge and skills.

To a large extent, MITTS Ltd has been successful on most of these thrusts. In terms of the core business realignment MITTS Ltd in 2004 completed the reform of its internal cost structures by eliminating cross-subsidisation amongst various services offered. The ability to place the true cost against each of the services provided, now allows MITTS Ltd to assume a more aggressive pace in the divestment of services designated as non core. In 2004 a tender was in fact issued for the sub-contracting of PC support of a population of 3,000 desktops and related peripherals –approximately 50% of the population of PCs in the Public Service for which MITTS Ltd is responsible for.

In tandem with the above, MITTS Ltd, unless otherwise directly instructed by the Government, did not participate in small application development and front end interfaces for e-government services – rather, changing its role towards that of a contract manager or systems integrator. Furthermore, in terms of 2nd generation strategic applications such as the Human Resources Information System and the Departmental Accounting System, MITTS Ltd role was transformed to one of business process change and functional analysis as against that of be-spoke developer. It is pertinent to mention that in 2004, MITTS Ltd was successful in two international tenders issued by the Government of Bermuda – the first for training in IS planning and budgeting, and the second for business and functional analysis consultancy in the reform of Bermuda’s tax process.

I cannot not mention that in 2004, the relatively young (created in January 2002) Department of Information Security and Risk Management earned its mettle. Working together with the Cabinet Office and the Infosec Authority the Department was instrumental in the attainment of the appropriate EU accreditation for the management of EU Classified Information and for the setting up of the EUGovernment Communications Centre.

In order to improve the quality of work delivered by MITTS Ltd and meet the service expectations of our clients, MITTS Ltd over the past years worked hard to introduce international disciplines that would enable it to strive and audit itself against international standards. The Company in 2004 attained full ISO 9001:2000 certification for all of its departments and processes – the last to be accredited being the afore mentioned Department of Information Security and Risk Management. PRINCE II is introduced as the Company’s project management methodology. In 2004 we intensified our work related to the introduction of the ITIL Service Management methodology.

It is pertinent to underline that in spite of the efforts and investment to upgrade our abilities to perform excellently in terms of quality and service provision failures do at times occur. In order to ensure that failures when they occur are experiences from which lessons must be learnt and which should act as a spur for further improvements, an Office of Internal Audit was constituted reporting to a Board Audit Committee under the stewardship of the Deputy Chairman of MITTS Ltd.

MITTS Ltd has for the past five years adopted the strategic philosophy that the sustainability of the Company is ultimately dependent on its ability to manage its structured costs. Over the past year various measures have been

introduced to maintain the pressure for cost reduction –with measures ranging from the review of human resources practices to the introduction of appropriate tools and software to increase productivity. Moreover, a tough stance towards resourcing has seen the Company’s complement since 2002 fall by 6% and the wage bill by 3% despite the yearly cost of living increases. Moreover, it is pertinent to add that despite inflationary pressures all the Company’s administrative overheads decreased by 30% from 2002 to 2004.

As the entity responsible for ICT for the Government of Malta, MITTS Ltd has a responsibility to ensure that it provides the Government with a stable ICT environment and one that is continuously evolving in view of changing needs and new technologies. 2004 saw MITTS Ltd, together with a private sector consortium constituting of Maltacom plc and Melita Cable plc, embark upon an ambitious and complex ICT project costing Lm3 million over a 12 year period – the decommissioning of the Malta Government Network (MAGNET) and its replacement: MAGNET II. It should be noted that unlike its predecessor, MAGNET II was in its entirety designed, implemented and commissioned by Maltese ICT professionals. MAGNET II is definitely a strong representation of how far Malta has evolved in terms of skills and experience in ICT since the heady days of the early 1990s.

Further investment was carried out by MITTS Ltd in the introduction of automated tools to improve service delivery as well as its capacity to act pro-actively. With regards to the former, MITTS Ltd introduced a service management suite of tools that will allow it to handle incidents, problems and other service areas far more efficiently and transparently. In terms of the latter MITTS Ltd continued with the implementation of its network management suite of tools thereby

board members david spiteri gingell (chairman), dr.godwin grima, claudio grech, john aquilina, joanne genovese

strengthening its capacity to provide 24 by 7 pro-active monitoring of the complex ICT infrastructure for which it is responsible.

MITTS Ltd is ultimately a knowledge based organisation. The Company is only as strong and as successful as the intellectual capital, skills and abilities resident in its staff –both collectively and individually. The challenge of maintaining a high skill level in the ICT environment is not to be underestimated: ICT is fast evolving, technologies changing virtually overnight placing considerable pressure on any ICT organisation to ensure that both it and its staff are not rendered irrelevant as it fails to re-shape and reskill itself. MITTS Ltd places considerable importance on this aspect and aggressively seeks to ensure that its staff are exposed to new technologies and that training is an inherent part of the Company’s strategic business goal, as well as inculcated within its culture. In 2004, in order to increase its facilities and options in this regard, MITTS Ltd introduced an e-Learning Centre – initially directed towards soft skills, but incrementally being broadened to encompass technical skills as well – currently covering CISCO, ITIL and Microsoft.

On the whole, I believe that 2004 was a successful year for MITTS Ltd. This is the merit of the outgoing Chairman and Board of Directors, of management, and of staff. I believe that MITTS Ltd has what it takes, in so far that it remains a learning organisation and maintains aggression and hunger for high quality and excellent service delivery, to meet the policy goals set for it by Government.

David Spiteri Gingell Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

The qualities, attributes and experiences that the company has added to its identity throughout these years, has given it an emotional intelligence that transcends mere expertise and know-how.