Plugging the Microstate

An area in which Malta has made considerable progress over the last two decades is that of Information and Communications Technology. Today, ICT is being applied throughout Maltese society: high-technology applications such as Internet Banking, I-Gaming, and E-Commerce are widely in use. Often taken for granted, these services have required a great deal of effort to develop, including the telecommunications infrastructure needed for their deployment.The situation regarding the introduction of computers in Malta-a small Mediterranean state which was once a British fortress colony-has not always been so captivating, however. In fact, notwithstanding an early start with programmable, punch-type, calculators and tabulators, Malta was a relatively late adopter of computing technology, the first mainframe not being installed until 1973. There are, of course, reasons for this slow take-up, just as there are reasons for the more recent rapid advances in the ICT sector. This study explains these reasons and tells the story of how, from humble beginnings, Malta has "plugged" into the information revolution and managed to become a recognised leader in today's global, knowledge-based economy.Plugging the Microstate will be of interest to a variety of audience, including technology and business historians, government officials involved in policy making, IT practitioners, computing students and educators, and anyone curious to know how information processing, the software industry and telecommunications have developed in Malta.