Malta is establishing a holistic plan for the management of data as an enterprise asset, Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation Silvio Schembri announced at the Semantic Interoperability Conference on data and information management.

The conference, which forms part of Malta's EU Presidency, is a collaboration between the European Commission's ISA Programme and MITA.

Schembri explained that data is the key fundamental layer on which the success of the digital economy depends. He also emphasized that data is widely considered as the fuel of the economy and possibly a new freedom, essential for the achievement of the objectives of the Digital Single Market.

The Parliamentary Secretary revealed that the National Data Strategy is at an advanced stage of technical consultation, and is being designed to harness this new power for the digitisation of processes.

Regarding the interoperability, Schembri said that this is crucial for both local and cross-border use of services and data. Likewise, it is also important to remove legal and political barriers for the free flow of data.

He explained that Malta is currently proposing a system of linked official registers which can serve as the foundation layer on which the main platforms for data re-use and simplification of processes can be built. Parliamentary Secretary Schembri said that this layer is important to achieve the Once-Only principle, and to achieve personalised and end-to-end public services.

While admitting that the implementation of such systems may be challenging, Parliamentary Secretary Schembri said that there are various ways and means how these objectives can be achieved in the coming three to five years.