Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/844299
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 2 JULY 2017 42 Information Technology Information Technology The annual Semantic Interoperability (SEMIC) conference, organised by the ISA2 Programme of the DG Informatics of the Eu- ropean Commission, was this year held in Malta on the 14th June. The ISA2 Programme is the flagship and the main platform of the European Commission aimed at promoting the IT solutions for less bureaucracy in the public administrations and for better services that can be offered to the Businesses and Citizens across all member states. The term Semantic Interoperability is de- fined as the "preservation of the meaning in the exchange of electronic information" and is the backbone of the work conduct- ed by the European Commission with the member states in the context of the devel- opment of the European and the national e-Government programmes. One main platform for these standards is the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) which was released earlier this year under its new features after being intro- duced in 2010. On a local level, each Mem- ber State is also responsible for a National Interoperability Framework (NIF) which is subject to an annual landscaping and cali- bration process. This is about establishing systems and standards to help us understand what is- sues or problems are being addressed and how the different terms in the different lan- guages and cultures are to be acted upon and understood between all the stakehold- ers and players in this long-term and multi- billion investment programme. This is the most fundamental aspect of such programmes because unless there is an a priori agreement and a very clear un- derstanding of what is being exchanged, then it may well result to be impossible to operate efficiently and effectively, result- ing in further problems and situations that negatively affect the expected benefits from such massive investments. The SEMIC is an international event which brings together policy makers and solution providers, researchers and other stake- holders and contributors with a keen inter- est in the topics relating to the manage- ment and exchange of information. With data being called the "fuel of the economy" and the Data Economy singled out and named as one of the main pillars of the Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy of the EU, it is no wonder that the subjects re- lating to the management of data and all its ramifications in the records and document management domains is now becoming mainstream and slowly but surely taking centre stage. This year's SEMIC conference was planned to coincide in a back-to-back travelling ar- rangement with the Digital Assembly 2017 also held in Valletta Malta on the follow- ing two days. The Digital Assembly was also part of the events marking the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the European Union which came to its end on the last day of June. The first SEMIC conference was held in Brussels in 2011 and this event was re- peated for the next two years also in this European capital. In 2014, the SEMIC conference ventured out of Brussels for the first time and moved to Athens in Greece with the following year to be held in the capital of Latvia, Riga. In 2016 it was held in the Italian capital, Rome. This year was the seventh edition of such a conference and Malta was proud to be asked to host such an important data re- lated conference. The theme selected for this year's meeting was "Data and Information Management". This conference normally brings together between 150 and 200 professionals from the public administrations across Europe but this year's invitation attracted over 250 registrations from Europe and from other continents as far as Japan. The actual at- tendance and participation in Malta was confirmed to be above the normal expec- tations for this event. SEMIC 2017 was organised jointly by the Directorate General Informatics, together with the Malta Information Technol- ogy Agency (MITA). MITA is the specialised agency that supports the Government of Malta in the implementation of its Digital Strategy and for all the operational and technology services beneath the informa- tion systems currently forming the critical information infrastructure on which all public services depend, including the most critical being the health, law and order, education and social services to name but a few. Data and Information are now more than ever recognised as high-value assets for both the public administrations and for pri- vate organisations and are an intrinsic part of the Data Economy initiatives. The theme selected for the SEMIC 2017 was designed to help the participants to share and learn from each other on how leading organisations and public administrations are creating value from data and informa- tion both for themselves and for their cus- tomers and citizens. The focal point for the data related initia- tives as proposed for this conference was on how these organisations are investing in data governance programmes and ini- tiatives; rethinking and re-designing their systems for the information discovery and retrieval both within and beyond their boundaries; sharing their information both internally and externally and how they are collaborating on data exchange matters; and using their data and their information to improve the decision-making process. The programme for the SEMIC 2017 in Malta was based on a general introductory ses- sion including a keynote speech which was then then followed by four sessions, namely on information governance and management in Member States, EU Insti- tutions and Agencies; data analytics; base registries as a source of master data and open data for knowledge sharing. This was followed by a panel discussion with the subject of: "Metadata, Information Retrieval and Delivery" and the closing session was wrapped up by the President of the Committee of the Regions. The opening on behalf of the Maltese presi- dency was delivered by the new Parliamen- tary Secretary within the Office of the Prime Minister, Honourable Silvio Schembri who is also responsible for the Digital Economy. The welcome speech on behalf of the Euro- pean Commission was delivered by Gertrud Ingestad, Director General responsible for Informatics at the EU Commission. This was followed by a talk on how ISA is fostering interoperability between public administration in the European Union de- livered by the Head of Interoperability of the ISA Programme. The keynote speech by the Head of the Information Services Development of the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Commu- nications of Estonia followed. The subject was about data and information manage- ment from the end user's point of view. The first session was then opened by the presentation on the National Data Strategy for Malta which was delivered by Joseph Saviour Azzopardi in his role as Enterprise Data Manager at MITA and as the Data Governance Officer for the Government of Malta. The conference then proceeded to several data management and governance related presentations which can be viewed and downloaded from the following dedicated website: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/159973 The 2017 Malta edition of the Semantic Interoperability Conference organised an- nually by the European Commission can be safely classified as a big success, both in terms of its organisation, venue and logis- tics and more importantly from the content and networking point of view. The logistics and organisation were very ably and efficiently handled by the small EU team within MITA and by the organi- sational and logistics team of the ISA Pro- gramme coordinated and supported by the Maltese ministry responsible for the Digital Economy and the MITA Executive Office. The outcome of such a conference is not only the possibility to listen and learn from the experience or the plans of other public administrations, but mainly to share expe- riences and discuss ways in which we can avoid to make mistakes which others may have gone through and to explain our pro- posals and plans in this sensitive and im- portant area of the public administration. We also had the opportunity to discuss the various aspects and interpretations for the implementation of the Once-Only Principle and try to gauge the reaction or interest such proposals receive. The feedback is that the plans currently be- ing proposed by Malta through the relevant documents containing the draft National Data Strategy and the building blocks for a new National Data Infrastructure including a new National Data Portal were received well. The data strategy proposals are now being closed in terms of popular and technical consultations and soon will be in the initial phases for their implementation in regards to the new Base Registers in Malta. The SEMIC 2017 conference provided a golden opportunity for this process to gain the required visibility and recognition. The next phases in this challenging and in- teresting way forward for the reduction of bureaucracy and the simplification of the processes for the delivery of public services in Malta are the key to the success in this area which we hope to be able to achieve in the next months and the years ahead of us. It is now imperative that this planning fol- lows with a holistic convergence on the information domains connected to the data economy including the free-flow of data and the effective governance of data assets and resources for a more efficient public ad- ministration. DR JOSEPH AZZOPARDI MITA Manager in Enterprise Data Management SEMIC 2017 – The Semantic Interoperability Conference Dr Joseph Azzopardi addressing the annual Semantic Interoperability (SEMIC) conference which was held in Malta on 14 June