Can we please get real!

To gain sustainable competitive edge, especially in this period of global economic mess, a country has to leverage technology in a big way. This is what the Obama administration knows and is doing. They are aware of the power and catalytic effect that ICT has to other sectors of the economy and in this realization, they are pumping a whooping US$ 71 Billion on IT in addition to appointing the first federal CIO in the person of Vivek Kundra to control this massive budget. Kundra’s main responsibilities will be to manage technology interoperability among agencies that will make the government transparent and efficient.

It is this sort of commitment that makes IT work, where a solid investment is made and mapped to a specific measurable outcome. In East Africa, we have never really seen this kind of commitment to investing properly in IT and yet we expect technology to work for us. Having worked with various government departments in the region, requested budgets are normally cut by more than 50% without due consideration of the kind of impact that this may have on the proposed projects. This is one of the reasons why many government initiatives never see the light of day.

For starters, just look at the budgetary allocations that IT has been receiving from the exchequer in the past years. I think in the Kenyan context, last year could have as well be know as the IT bumper harvest, the sector received what is the largest ever allocation, KSh 1 billion. This is thanks to the persistence of one Dr. Bitange Ndemo and the architects of the East African Marine System (TEAMS). That cash went to underwrite the commissioning of the feasibility study of the East African Marine System (TEAMS).

I did not get a chance to participate in the pre-budget hearing for the sector this year, however, I have some documents that have indicative figures that have been put forth by the Ministry of Information and Communication for consideration in the 2009/2010 budget estimates. My suspicion is, these figures are indicative of the region, given that Kenya is the largest economy in the region.

Under the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) 2009/10 – 2011/12, ICT falls in the Research, Innovation and Technology sector. This sector is made up of two ministries, Ministry of Higher education and Technology and the Ministry of Information and Communication together with thirty-three semi-autonomous government agencies including the Government IT Services, Directorate of e-Government and the Kenya ICT Board.

Total requirement for the sector in 2009/10 amounts to KShs. 92.4 billion up from Kshs.45.6 billion in FY2008/09. These comprise of KShs.53.4 billion required for financing recurrent expenditures while KShs.37.9 billion will be required for development expenditures. This budget financed from external resources and internally generated revenue from the institutions to the tune of KShs.10.9 billion leaving a net of 81.4 billion to be financed through the exchequer. However, the Government allocation to the Sector is only KSh 37.5 billion, less than 50% of the sector requirements.

If you dig into the numbers you realize that the core IT budget is about 24.3 billion, 50% of which is recurrent expenditure. Looking at it closer, you get to realize that most of the development allocation (10 billion) goes to a sub-programme titled, Data Management with 9 billion allocated to statistical management system. Then you start to see the gaps. 24 billion, less 10 billion for a statistical managemnt system, less 9 billion for infrastructure, less another 4 billion for training and your are left with 1 billion for everything else outside those areas. As if this is not complicated enough, the sector will only receive 50% of this allocation.

We certainly need to get serious and do things right. Under-budgeting is a sure way of having white elephants in the name of stalled projects which in itself is a waste of resources. So lets start by scoping what we really need and that can be accomplished with the available resources. I would strongly advise that we should not get into any new projects if we do not have the necessary budgetary allocations. Trying to implement a 10 billion project with 5 billion will not have the desired effect, so lets get real.

May the real BPOs please stand up

Frost and Sullivan, a respected research and management consultancy firm based in the US, predicts that the full impact of the economic slowdown will be felt by the outsourcing industry in the coming year or two. And advises that outsourcers must be quick enough to react to developing conditions and rethink business strategies if they are to maintain growth in the face of a slowing global economy.

I suspect Michael Joseph, Safaricom’s CEO read this report and went ahead to make a rather unpopular business decision among the local Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) community. This decision was to invest and manage an Sh800 million ultra-modern call centre; his motive, to be able to answer 85 percent of all customer care calls within the first 20 seconds of the first ring. This to me, reads like a move to increase operational efficiencies. Over the last one year, Safaricom has been accused of poor customer care and ever engaged customer care lines and therefore a dedicated call centre to solve customer problems is a welcome addition.

It is, however, interesting that Safaricom decided to invest huge sums of money in a service that could have been easily out sourced, or so you think. Safaricom defied experts and global best practices, in making this decision and that is probably what Frost and Sullivan are talking about. I’m reminded that they actually wanted to go that way and even put out a tender sometime last year for a BPO operator to run the call centre. With BPO profiled as a pillar within the Vision 2030, it would have been politically correct for Safaricom to go that way, but they chose to a different route.

So why did Michael Joseph chose to go against the grain? Here allow me to speculate since I’m not the man who manages the company that has in three consecutive years won the East African most respected company award. As stated earlier, Safaricom had no intention of running the call centre. They even did not want to invest in putting it up in the first place and were going to work smart by outsourcing this non-core activity to the experts, read the BPO operators. But after putting out a tender for this work twice, they realized that they could not identify an operator who was ready for their kind of work.

It has been reported in different media that the local BPO operators could neither meet the technical specifications nor the pricing expectation. Something that reminds me of an observation I made a while back on this new economic sector that most BPOs were founded on unsustainable business models and lack vision. It is estimated that more than 75% of the existing BPOs were formed after the Government through the Kenya ICT Board announced that they would provide subsidies to BPOs as a way of growing the sector in line with the Vision 2030. So to expect companies that were formed on this premise and looking out for Government handouts to invest in the kind of infrastructure that Safaricom was looking for is to say the least, a long shot.

Then, there is the issue of focus. BPOs in the country have been spending too much time looking for business outside the country that they seem to have forgotten to build capacity in their operations and look for business locally. There are many organisations like Safaricom who would like to outsource there non-core but are stuck to them because there are no suitable suitors. It is my humble submission that there is need for the BPO sector to reorganize and restrategise for it to play a meaningful role in the development of the country and to contribute effectively in our ambitious vision 2030.

Whose Internet

Last week was a rather interesting week for policy makers in the region, especially those who have taken time to understand internet governance issues. From the onset, everyone seems to know what internet governance is all about, but the moment you dig deeper and start asking hard questions, you start getting very interesting answers of how the internet cannot actually be governed.

But is this what internet governance really means? Internet Governance does not refer to governance in the "policing" sense or "control" of the internet as one would think, no. A working group established after the UN-initiated WSIS defined internet governance as "the development and application by governments, private sector and civil society, in their respective rules, shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the internet.  

So IG stems from the realisation that the internet is a scarce and valuable resource that each country and stakeholder needs access to and therefore needs policies and mechanisms acceptable to all players to promote its growth, maintain its stability and secure it. And that is what Internet Governance is all about...let me know what you think.

Opening the Internet Governance Debate in East Africa

October has been an interesting month on issues of Internet Governance. For the first time, the region, that is Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi are discussing issues around Internet Governance in preparation for a regional meeting and later a global forum for the same.

The issues around IG have been around for a while, but were probably prioritised after the second WSIS meeting in Tunis, Tunisia where the UN Secretary was mandated to form a forum for stakeholders to dialogue around issues around the way the internet is managed. This forum is currently non-policy making, however, alot of issues discussed in the forum find there way into global policies.

The region has not hard an opportunity to prepare and think issues through and identify issues that are important and common across East Africa. So having a regional meeting that aims to have a common position for East Africa, is to say the least exciting. Kenya held its National IG on the 14th of October, Tanzania followed with its version on the 22nd of October. Rwanda and Uganda are set to have their own on the 29th of October after which the issues identified will be collated and discussed at a regional meeting in Nairobi between 10-12 November. I Cant wait for this. 

ICT Policy Harmonisation a must for regional integration

There will be no regional integration without ICT, these were the words of the Deputy Secretary General of the East African Community when addressing stakeholders at the Policy Review workshop in Nairobi today. To have ICT work for the region, there is need to harmonise policies that will help achieve the goal of the EAC to widen and deepen economic, political and cultural integration in order to improve the quality of life of the people of the region through increased competitiveness.

Energy critical for success of e-Government

I have heard about it from colleagues and partners, but it had never happened in front of my eyes before, in between a very crucial session in a workshop on ICT for Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, the self proclaimed capital city of Africa and viola, an unprecedented power blackout that turns the meeting room into a dark room, akin to film production studios and forces the interpreters to move out of their interpretation booth and join the distinguished participants to push the meeting agenda forward, albeit briefly.

This got me thinking:  if we can have a blackout in the capital of the continent, which renders all communication networks unusable or provides just limited connectivity, is the continent really ready for e-Government which is highly dependent on electricity?

Yes, I hear you; one can use backup power, diesel-power generator or may be solar; just to report that none of these were available for our meeting. In Nairobi, we normally take these alternative power sources very seriously to avoid such embarrassing situations.

Moral of the story? As we plan to implement e-government in our countries, it is critical that we do this in tandem with the roll out of electricity so that we are not caught in a situation where we down our fancy, efficient, highly productive  e-Government tools for archaic traditional, inefficient  systems.  Without fear of contradiction, I would dare recommend that Governments reviewing their e-Government strategies should include a component of provision of energy...mainstream or alternative.

Digital Villages: Serious potential for e-Government

They have since been rebranded to Pasha Centres, translating to information centres or if you are like me, information access centres. This is in realisation that the digital villages are not a technological event or activity but an investment that has the potential of opening up government and effectively offer public service to the remotest village in the country.

But what the Pasha Centres are has been a subject of discussion and even controversy since the initial concept was unveiled more than a year ago. Listening to ten different people involved in the project talking about the Centres, one could be excused to thinking that its ten different projects that were being discussed.

With the kind of potential and interest from especially would be investors in the programme, the situation was to say the least worrying. I’m however, glad to report that this is quickly changing as the Kenya ICT Board took time to define, plan the deployment, roll-out, management and funding of the Pasha Centres. This to me was as refreshing as it was important.

It is almost official that the Pasha Centres will among other services offer online government services, plan are underway to link the Pashas with the implementation of e-Government in the country. This requires collaboration between the ICT Board and the Directorate of e-Government who are charged with the task of implementing e-Government in the country.

Turning traditional public services into online services is no mean task, it requires rationalisation, alignment and a sizeable investment in systems, people and re-engineering of processes within government and a massive awareness programme. This will take some time to be realised, but as long as we start walking in this direction in regard to the Pashas and e-Government, we shall get there in no time...so lets get going.