Top 5 Jobs in Government That Are Most at Risk from AI in Malta - And How to Adapt

Malta's national AI push - branded as

the ultimate AI launchpad

puts artificial intelligence squarely on the agenda for public servants because the strategy prioritises public‑sector adoption, pilot projects in health, education and traffic, and asks each ministry's Chief Information Officer to map AI uses across government (Malta AI Strategy action points).

Expect more automation of routine tasks alongside new demand for data governance and digital skills: the strategy funds awareness campaigns, training and procurement reform, and even highlights high‑profile pilots (a Mater Dei hospital robot that processed 800 COVID tests per day is one striking example) (Malta AI Strategy report).

For government workers in Malta who want practical, job-focused AI skills, the AI Essentials for Work bootcamp teaches prompt writing and applied AI tools to make roles more resilient and productive (AI Essentials for Work registration).

Methodology: the roles were identified by triangulating Malta's own AI priorities and pilot projects with independent labour‑market analysis and a legal/regulatory scan - in practice this meant mapping the national priorities and reskilling actions laid out in the Malta AI Strategy report (AI Watch) against the International Monetary Fund's finding that Malta is slightly less susceptible to AI displacement but that women, young people and those with only secondary schooling face higher risk (IMF: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Malta's Labour Market), while also checking legal contours and recent regulatory developments in local AI law and governance (Malta AI laws and regulations (Global Legal Insights)).

Roles were scored by exposure to routine, data‑intensive tasks, visibility in existing public‑sector pilots (health, traffic, customer service) and the practical feasibility of automation; that approach highlights jobs where repetitive paperwork or predictable call‑handling could be sped up - picture registry clerks' form stacks being processed with the same industrial scale as the Mater Dei robot that handled 800 COVID tests a day - and flags where targeted reskilling and policy safeguards are most urgent.

Registry clerks and records officers sit squarely in the crosshairs because their work is intensely routine, data‑heavy and highly automatable: think repetitive form processing, manual validation and case routing that AI can speed up or handle end‑to‑end.

The IMF's assessment of Malta flags particular displacement risk for workers with only secondary education - often the profile of front‑line records staff - so the social impact could be uneven unless reskilling is prioritised (IMF Malta labour market analysis 2025).

At the same time, practical mitigation is possible: organisations that invest in strong data governance, role‑based controls and automated validations make automation safer and turn clerks into data stewards and exception managers rather than redundant typists - Deloitte's playbook on Deloitte: Data governance and AI readiness for organisations lays out those concrete steps.

In short, imagine stacks of paper becoming a monitored digital queue - fewer hours spent retyping, more time spent resolving the odd, human‑centred case - and with targeted training and governance this transition can protect jobs while boosting service quality (Zendesk: AI in government - key applications and future trends).

Frontline customer service representatives - those at citizen helpdesks and call centres - are already shifting from being first responders to becoming exception managers as Malta moves to automate routine queries: the national strategy flags customer‑service pilots and even funds an AI‑powered chatbot for servizz.gov, a clear signal that simple enquiries will be triaged by machines (Malta national AI strategy customer-service pilots; AI-powered Servizz.gov chatbot pilot).

The practical upside is real - MITA's digital rollout connecting more than 23,000 public servants on Microsoft 365 reportedly saves about 30 minutes per person each day - time that can be repurposed to handle complex, sensitive cases a bot can't resolve (MITA Microsoft 365 rollout saving 30 minutes per public servant).

For helpdesk teams in Malta, the clearest adaptation is to lean into multilingual support, oversight of automated decisions and human‑centred problem solving so citizens get faster service without losing the empathy and judgement only people can provide.

“citizens need to remain at the heart of any strategy.”

Paralegals and legal assistants in public legal offices and legal aid are squarely in the mix as AI reshapes routine legal work: tools that can scan, summarise and draft across thousands of pages mean tasks that once swallowed days of billable time can be reduced to minutes, freeing staff to focus on nuance, client care and legal judgement rather than clerical churn.

That shift is both risk and opportunity for Malta's public sector - document review, discovery triage and form drafting are highly automatable, but the human skills that follow matter more than ever: verifying AI outputs, safeguarding confidential client data, and handling sensitive interviews where empathy and context are essential.

Practical adaptation looks like formal training in prompt engineering and AI limitations, clear protocols for human review, and choosing purpose‑built legal AI that keeps client data secure - approaches recommended across industry analyses and vendor case studies showing dramatic time savings on heavy discovery sets (Thomson Reuters analysis: Will AI replace paralegals?) and concrete litigation examples of AI surfacing 85% of key documents where dozens of reviewers would once have been needed (CallidusAI blog: AI in paralegal workflows and litigation support).

The bottom line for Maltese public legal teams: treat AI as a force‑multiplier - train, govern and supervise it so paralegals become quality controllers and client advocates, not victims of automation.

“AI is not the enemy of paralegals, it's the future.”

Finance clerks and bookkeepers in Malta face a clear, practical shift: the repetitive grunt work - data entry, reconciliations and payroll churn - is increasingly handled by AI, freeing teams to become guardians of data quality and strategic advisers rather than perpetual reconcilers; in real terms AI‑driven reconciliation tools can cut month‑end close times by about 58% and automated compliance checks can slash regulatory penalties, so the end‑of‑month that once swallowed whole weekends can shrink dramatically AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - industry outlook for AI in accounting and finance.

Practical action in Maltese government accounts teams means pairing careful GDPR‑aware AI adoption with reskilling in analytics and exception management AI Essentials for Work - GDPR and AI compliance guidance for Malta, and treating tools as assistants - not replacements - so bookkeepers move toward interpretation, fraud‑detection oversight and client communication as routine tasks are automated.

“Accounting is not just about counting beans; it's about making every bean count.” – William Reed

Junior policy and market‑research analysts in Maltese ministries are likely to feel AI's impact first because their day‑to‑day - country and regional reviews, data collection and drafting policy briefs - is exactly the sort of structured, repeatable work that can be accelerated by models; the OECD's Junior Policy Analysts role spells out those core tasks and even flags a typical expectation of at least two years' policy experience (OECD Junior Policy Analysts job posting – Artificial Intelligence role description).

At the same time Malta's AI governance agenda means entry‑level analysts will increasingly need to translate technical risk rules into practical checks - knowing how the EU AI Act is being implemented locally and the MDIA's risk tiers will matter in day‑to‑day assessments of high‑risk systems (MDIA guidance on Artificial Intelligence and implementation of the EU AI Act in Malta).

Practical resilience looks like new skills in data‑quality oversight, synthesising AI‑driven outputs for ministers, and clear note‑making so automated summaries remain auditable - skills covered in local guides on GDPR, AI compliance and government use cases that help turn automation from a threat into a productivity boost (GDPR and AI compliance guide for Maltese government agencies (2025)), making junior analysts the vital bridge between technology, law and policy rather than its casualties.

Practical next steps for government workers and HR in Malta start with a clear, staged plan: map which roles are high‑risk under the MDIA's risk tiers and the EU AI Act and run simple audits to spot routine, data‑heavy tasks that pilots (like the servizz.gov chatbot) are already triaging; strengthen governance by assigning board and HR oversight so policy, procurement and fairness checks are baked in; invest in targeted reskilling - short, work‑focused courses that teach prompt craft, oversight and data‑quality checks can convert displaced tasks into higher‑value roles - and partner with MDIA grants and national pilots to pilot safe deployments before scaling.

Make accountability concrete by insisting on human review, audit trails and bias testing, and use pilots to reallocate time from repetitive processing to citizen care: imagine routine queries handled by a chatbot while people manage the complex exceptions that matter most.

For practical training, consider job‑focused upskilling like the AI Essentials for Work bootcamp to build the prompt‑writing and tool‑use skills public servants need to adapt in place (MDIA: AI implementation & governance in Malta, EY: Malta's AI opportunity, AI Essentials for Work bootcamp registration).

“Whether you're a business leader or a policymaker, the implications of AI for Malta are too significant to ignore”