The unpaid civil servants: Local programmers building what the Government hasn’t

In Malta, a quiet movement is unfolding. Not in Parliament chambers or Government offices, but behind computer screens. Local web developers, often working in their spare time with little recognition and no financial backing, are creating free tools the public urgently needs.

From platforms that track development permits, to a site that demystifies Malta’s most powerful legal document, a pollution tracker, and a portal that gathers hundreds of government grants in one place – these are just some of the tools ordinary citizens have built to tackle everyday frustrations.

• Andrew Cachia – grants.mt

When Andrew Cachia lost out on a €15,000 grant as a first-time buyer of a property within an Urban Conservation Area (UCA), the experience left him with more than just disappointment – it gave him the spark for a new project.

“I was promised a number of grants, subsidies and incentives that would help ease the journey,” Mr Cachia said.

“I tried looking for information online and calling the Government help centres. Unfortunately, the landscape is so confusing, with so many overlapping grants across different entities, that I got met with misleading information, which resulted in me applying for the wrong grants.”

“By the time I realised, the door had closed,” he shared in an interview with WhosWho.mt

To solve this, he launched grants.mt, a platform that brings together over 250 schemes covering property, business, culture, sports and family support. Though still in its early days and with no marketing, the site has already attracted more than 1,200 visitors and secured a spot on Google’s first page, showing strong public interest.

• Simon Agius Muscat – app.permess.mt / alerts.permess.mt 

Despite carefully researching before buying his first home, Simon Agius Muscat was repeatedly caught off guard by neighbouring renovation projects which impacted his quality of life, often discovering them only after the 30-day deadline to object had passed.

Using publicly available data from the Planning Authority (PA), app.permess.mt reorganises and presents information in a way that’s far more user-friendly and transparent for ordinary citizens. Users can highlight an area of interest and know exactly how many active permits are in the area, as well as have direct links to the latest five permits in the area.

Mr Agius Muscat points out in an interview with BusinessNow.mt, that while the PA does notify residents of nearby developments, the system is unreliable – letters may not arrive and projects on nearby streets that still impact him are excluded.

To mitigate this problem Mr Agius Muscat also developed a separate application, alerts.permess.mt, that sends users email alerts for any developments in a specific area of their choice.

• Daniel Vella – pollution.mt

Daniel Vella, a software engineer by profession, photographer and former president of cycling NGO Rota, grew frustrated while cycling daily to work from Attard to Valletta.

“On a bike you’re exposed to the elements, and the air always felt heavy, polluted. I used to get really angry looking at massive black clouds of exhaust,” he says.

Looking for data to back up his hunch, he found it – but it was buried in technical reports and hard to understand.

That frustration became the seed for an ongoing side project: a website, pollution.mt, that pulls hourly data from Malta’s five air monitoring stations and translates it into clear, colour-coded visuals.

“If I’m struggling to understand it, then most people are probably experiencing the same hurdles,” he explains. “So I built something simple and accessible.”

The site compares Malta’s readings against both EU air quality limits and the far stricter World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, highlighting just how often the island’s air falls short.

It also reminds users that pollution isn’t just about exhaust pipes – brake discs, tyres and road dust all generate fine particles (PM10 and PM2.5) that can lodge in lungs or even seep directly into the bloodstream.

The project, which Mr Vella admits took him longer than it should have – “perfectionism gets to me, I kept thinking it wasn’t good enough” – was finally launched two years ago, after he told himself to simply see it to the end.

• Alex Portelli – constitutionofmalta.com

Constitutionofmalta.com is an online resource designed to open Malta’s most important legal document to the public in plain, accessible language. Visitors can read the Constitution itself or explore its history through simplified versions tailored for different age groups, children aged five, ten, fifteen and older.

“The Constitution is a dense document, filled with legal jargon, but it’s ultimately the foundation of our republic,” Alex Portelli said in an interview with MaltaCEOs.mt.

Mr Portelli argues that many of Malta’s social challenges stem from a lack of civic education. Despite defining the nation’s democratic and legal framework, the Constitution remains distant and unfamiliar to most citizens.

“If you try to take an American citizen’s gun, they’ll immediately quote the constitutional amendment that protects it,” he notes.

“In Malta, we don’t have that same level of awareness.”

Alex Portelli is also the person behind personalfinancetool.com, a free website to help users manage their finances.