I am welcoming the news that the Maltese government is entertaining the deployment of open source software (OSS) in the Maltese public service. More and more European Governments and companies are considering to move parts of their applications to Open Source.
Following this trend, the government shall revise its IT education strategy.
In today’s world, it is not acceptable that schools are obliging parents to purchase products of a certain brand so that their children are able to do their homework. Education should be freed of any product branding, concepts should be taught instead. We also must go away from the copy/paste mentality.
The program of studies at MCAST needs to be updated, students should have the freedom of choice for the content of their studies. The IT world is a very open world, standards exists but they are not concentrated on brands or products, but on concepts.
It is pointless to “produce IT clones” having all the same skill, IT is about diversity. This is very important considering the venue of Smart City.
