Politically, it is an all-important cohort: always there, never in decline and if anything, on the increase. But I don’t want to talk politics today (who would, in this heat?)

These are the invisible people, those who never appear on television, except as an audience, those who are everywhere, and yet are never noticed, those who, on the other hand, make up the numbers – of crowds, of masses, of audiences, of majorities as well.

They are the ones without whom we can never get along: if we want anything done, we have to go to them. They are plumbers, electricians and plasterers if you are building your house. They are the ubiquitous computer, air-conditioner, etc., experts, let alone the myriad experts about anything to do with the car.

But the most pervasive, I find, along with many people, are those in government employment – especially in that area we all get to need at some time or another: the health sector.

The present technological age makes it very possible for people to access the government services they need. The previous government, well ahead of its time, tried to set up direct internet access to government services. It has been a glorious failure. There was e-ID which was supposed to be the key to all government services. I tried it, as many must have done, but it no longer works for me – let me say that it was my fault or that I could not keep up with the required updates.

I know of people who had an inordinate delay in getting just a simple request complied with. The over-all impression I got was a department starved of the resources needed.

I said the project was ambitious, and you could say that again. Since Malta is so small, it was conceivably easy to have a whole range of services online, accessible by people in possession of their e-identity. But I remember from that time – and it seems that it has got worse – that there was immense resistance from all sorts of government services. As far as I know, for instance, family doctors are unable to access their patients’ medical files from hospital, which was one of the key aims of that service, if I remember correctly.

Enter the invisible people. You can, of course, do anything by yourself (if you are able) but I can guarantee that you will get nowhere by telephone. You can get your consultant to do it for you, and many end up doing this. Or you can get an invisible person to talk to another invisible person who maybe is related and, hey presto! the file is in your hand. Of course, patient confidentiality can go hang.

We all know about the huge sums spent in recent years to furnish government departments with computers and today most people have email access and what have you – so how come many of the communications from government come in the well-trusted form of paper and envelope – and the post?

I am by no means blaming these invisible people for the kinks in the system. On the contrary, think of what could happen if not even this shortcut was available. This secondary system exists because there are people who want – who need – it to exist.

Nor is it wise to try and stamp this system out of existence. It is not the invisible people who have caused the system to falter and even collapse in the first place. They exist and have filtered in every nook and cranny because the faltering system gave birth to them and provided them with opportunities all around.

The solution, as I see it, is the pain-in-the-back one to get the system back to work, bit by bit, and to encourage use, and of course to ensure there are no hidden obstacles or resistances. Worse, much worse, would be to put the clock back and return Malta once again to a clientelar bastion.

The invisible people, all over the world, remind one of the Second World, something that happens in the Byzantine world or a Luis Funes film, a parallel world to the official one, one that works and functions while allowing the official world to take the credit. To remove it, to scrap it, would be like what Karl Marx said would follow the removal of the “opium of the people”: wholesale disorientation.

The invisible people exert a limiting, restrictive, pervasive influence everywhere. Consider tourism, for instance. How much of our tourism offer is translated through the prism as offered by the many taxi drivers, tourist guides, officialdom in its various guises and the ordinary people in the streets?

Although great strides continue to be made in this respect, I am afraid the invisible people with the various technological inadequacies, keep us back far more than we care to know. Fortunately, this is being overcome through ease of obtaining anything from anywhere and from the internet-based world that knows no frontiers.

We have come a great distance since the days, unthinkable today, when computers were banned and when Malta lacked connectivity to the continent.  Internet providers - doubling up as providers of internet, mobile, and television in a fiercely competitive environment - have to be continually up to scratch. Otherwise, had there been any hint of monopoly, we would still have been in the Stone Age.

This is us, this is how the system is, and today, more than ever, it is ingrained in the country. It has accompanied the progress we have accumulated in the 10 years since EU accession and, even more, in the 50 years since independence. Undoubtedly, we could have done better, but unless the invisible people are helped to move ahead even more, we still have a hard climb in front of us.

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