SA government goes open source

This article by Sumayya Ismail was first published in Mail&Guardian Online

Sumayya Ismail and Sapa | Johannesburg, South Africa
27 February 2007 09:32

South Africa is joining countries such as Brazil, India and Uganda in implementing open-source software in all government departments -- and getting rid of widely used Microsoft Windows desktop programmes that come with expensive licences.

Open-source software can be shared by many users without a need for licences. The actual code can be accessed by anyone to make changes and adapt it to different situations.

A Cabinet-approved policy and strategy to implement such software will lower administration costs and enhance local IT skills, Themba Maseko, head of the Government Communication and Information System, said last week.

"All new software developed for or by the government will be based on open standards, and government will itself migrate current software to Foss [free and open-source software]," he told a media briefing at Parliament.

By April, a project office will be set up by the Department of Science and Technology, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and the State Information Technology Agency to ensure the smooth implementation of the new strategy.

Karl Fischer, the government's open-source project manager, says some government departments have already been using open-source software for "back-end" processes such as mail servers.

He said the new strategy will place open-source software in all areas of government. From mail servers to desktop applications such as word processors, there will be a move towards Linux-operated open-source software.

Petition

Last year, Sangonet and other NGOs petitioned the government and Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi to adopt an open-source software policy following a declaration signed at the 2005 Go Open Source conference at the Sandton Convention Centre.

The petition was endorsed by the Centre for Policy Studies, the Freedom of Expression Institute and the Institute for Security Studies, among others.

It urged the government "to take a stronger, direct leadership role to the benefit of all". The government accounts for more than 50% of the country's ICT use and should set a precedent that favours open source and its underlying principles, it added.

"As a developing country, South Africa, along with all the countries on the African continent, needs you and our government to act as agents of positive change in our society and trigger shifts in the ICT market dynamics, in order to favour the supply of local ICT content, support,
skills and service providers, and to reduce our long-standing dependence on imports and the negative effects created by this dependence," the petition stated.

It further held that in the spirit of broad-based black economic empowerment, the government had a responsibility to implement open-source software and make it easier for other, smaller ICT users to access the hardware and technical skills needed to sustain it.

David Barnard, director of Sangonet, says it is possible the petition prompted the government to implement open-source software. However, the decision had been "brewing within government" for a while, he said.

Fischer confirms that it was an internal government decision to implement open-source software fully. But, he added: "Obviously we do listen to what [civil society] have to say."

Benefits

Government personnel will be trained to use the new software at the Meraka Institute's training centres throughout the country. Open-source training materials are also freely available, making them more affordable and accessible to users.

Despite these training requirements and other initial costs, Fischer says open-source software will be more affordable in the long term. "Our hardware won't need upgrading … but it would have needed upgrading if we switched to Windows Vista. Linux will work out cheaper."

The cost of Linux is significantly less than that of the Microsoft licences the government has been paying, he says, although he declined to give the actual cost of the new operating system, as it will only be implemented fully by December this year.

"Because the whole open-source community is backing us, we can harness the whole community to help us," Fischer says. "People are very keen to help out where they can … and where they can't, we will have to get the necessary skills, and we have the funds for it."

Pfungwa Serima, MD of Microsoft South Africa, says the software giant fully supports the standards on which open-source software is based, as it is "in line with our software development strategy in enabling interoperability between software from multiple vendors, thus allowing customers to choose the application for their specific requirements".

Judgement reserved

Though "on-the ground" institutions and training centres are already set up, Sangonet's Barnard says he will reserve judgement until he sees the initial roll-out plans. "This is a huge opportunity for South Africa to make it work … but it may be one of those decisions that were undertaken,
but the follow-through is just not there."

Fischer says that along with a cut in costs, the open-source strategy will also foster inter-community development, transparency and sharing, and build local skills to enhance and support the new software. "And, instead of giving money away to multinationals, we are keeping it and putting it to use internally."

However, Barnard says a major challenge is the lack of public understanding of the principles of open-source software.

"The important thing is for people to understand the economic, social and other values we could derive from it … and in the bigger mindset is the creation of an information society in the country. [We need] proper understanding … the capacity, expertise and political will to do something to implement it."

However, the strategy does "look good on paper", he adds, and its implementation will "say to the world that South Africa is -- in a national, political and strategic way -- committed to open source".

East African Governments report on eGovernment progress

Last week the Regional Working Group (RWG) on eGoverenment constituted by the East African Community (EAC) secretariat in 2004 met in Arusha, Tanzania for the 10^th time to access the progress made in each country, identify regional opportunities for eGovernment and plan joint activities for the coming twelve months.

Indications from all the five EAC partner states are that eGovernment is slowly taking root and being recognized by the various governments as a transformational tool in public service delivery. It is also obvious that governments are feeling the heat of technology and is driving the change with mobile technologies making a major impact on the way services are being delivered. For instance short messaging services (sms) are gaining in popularity as a channel for public information delivery, from utility bills to examination results.

Country Round-up

Below is a summary of the highlights of progress in eGovernment from the five EAC member states as presented to the RWG.

Burundi

This is probably the most underdeveloped countries in the region has made some restructuring of its Transport, Post and Telecommunications ministry with objective of developing an e-Government strategy and its subsequent implementation. A new agency has been created under the ministry to handle all maters of Information and Communication Technologies including eGovernment. This action is meant to speed up the uptake of ICT within the government and the country at large.

Kenya

The implementation of the 2004 eGovernment Strategy is on-going despite the fact that the strategy was meant to have accomplished its mandate by end of last year. In the last twelve months, the Directorate of eGovernment has trained more than 200 officers from different ministries and departments on ICT. All the 167,000 government offers have been allocated a .go.ke email address to the district level. This according to the officials from the Directorate of eGovernment, will ease communication within government. The Directorate has also recruited and seconded to different ministries 78 ICT officers and 200 other ICT staff.

It was also reported that in 2007, the government undertook an eGovernment awareness campaign countrywide in an effort to sensitive public servants and the community of the benefits of eGovernment. All government ministries have websites which are currently being upgraded to accommodate to a standard template with the same look and feel and to allow the next phase of web presence - online transactions. Other developments reported include the online jobs application implemented by the Public Service Commission, the Integrated Population Registry System, the modernization of the Company Registry and ICT infrastructure development at provincial headquarters and government buildings.

Uganda

The government of Uganda has placed ICTs under one political leadership for policy guidance and direction by creating a ministry of Information and Communications Technology. The young ministry is charged with the implementation of the country’s ICT policy framework and the newly crafted eGovernment Strategy. To get things going, the government has initiated the National Data Transmission Backbone and e-Government infrastructure project which is meant to deploy a nationwide fiber-optic backbone and a government network. So far all government ministries are connected to one network. On the policy and regulatory side, the principles and objectives of the Cyber laws Bill have been approved by Cabinet. This paves way for the bill to be drafted and sent to parliament for discussion before being enacted into law.

Tanzania

Tanzania is the first country in the region to develop and adopt a Policy for ICT back in March 2003. A cabinet decision to fast-track eGovernment was taken in 2004 and recommended the establishment of a focal point to coalesce and reinforce the many existing, fragmented and isolated e‑Government initiatives; building of a national wide-area network to carry voice and data communications efficiently among all levels of Government; and to create awareness of the opportunities for strategic ICT use across the public service.

Though the country is yet to publish its strategy, eGovernment has been identified as a critical ingredient in the success of the objectives and outcomes of the second phase of the Public Service Reform Program. Under this initiative, eGovernment initiatives are expected to augment the operations of ministries, departments and agencies an intervention to improve the quality of service to the community.

Rwanda

Like in Burundi, Rwanda has also restructured its lead ICT organ, Rwanda Information Technology Authority (RITA) and place it under the Office of the President to give it the necessary clout to move the ICT and eGovernment agenda forward. This now means that the operations of RITA will be under the watchful eye of His Excellency Paul Kagame himself. RITA is currently implementing the NICI plan 2006-2010, probably the most elaborate ICT policy framework in the region with 28 e-Government Projects coordinated under 8 Directorates.

Under the eGovernment Directorate, 7 projects are already underway including the GovNet, a WAN connecting all government ministries; Video Conferencing, National ID and SmartGov, a budgeting and accounting system for government; GateKeeper, an application to help immigration control and secure at the country’s borders; it includes a Visa issuing component ; ProfileMaster, a software designed for National Security Services and Military Intelligence and Documents, a correspondence tracking system designed for the special needs of Ministries and large organizations (workflow management, document management and productivity measuring tool).

With this review, one can see there is movement in the realm of eGovernment in the region despite the challenges of resources, legislation and infrastructure. Burundi and Tanzania are yet to formally publish and adopt national strategies on eGovernment. This does not mean that there is not eGovernment activity, but their less coordination as each ministry runs and implements its own projects based on their mandate and priorities. Tanzania has taken the first steps as a draft strategy does exist but requires the political push to finalise it and start implementing. Burundi on the other hand has started making initial plans to have a stakeholders’ meeting in April 2008 to chart the way forward on eGovernment.

Kenya and Uganda seem to have gained momentum in their eGovernment efforts. From the briefing, it was clear that Uganda’s focus is on developing infrastructure while Kenya has already started rolling out some eGovernment applications including the popular Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) voter status check via sms. Rwanda on the other hand seems to have taken a wholistic approach to ICT including eGovernment and with the support and goodwill from the Country’s CEO, the sky is the limit.

IT Governance: Could the ICT Board be the answer?

While appreciating the presentation by the newly established Kenya ICT Board at the recent Kenya ICT Federation (KIF) luncheon dubbed “State of the Industry” Presentation, what came into my mind was, could the ICT Board be the answer to the IT Governance vacuum that has bogged the government ever since IT, or for the more development inclined, ICT became a priority? The presentation was quite refreshing despite the violence that has rocked the country over the December 2007 disputed elections, one could be forgiven to think that its business as usual hearing the efforts that the Board is putting in place to “develop Kenya to a top ten global ICT hub and a transformed information empowered society”, as stated in their newly crafted vision.

Having been in the ICT Strategy and Policy arenas for a while now, and almost stuck there, this was my focus while listening to the officials of the ICT Board, led by their able CEO, Paul Kukubo of the 3 Mice fame, lay their strategies and mandate in the open for the participants to appreciate and even contribute to their development. One thing that struck my attention was the scope of the Board’s work.

According to Mr. Kukubo’s presentation, the board is mandated to spearhead the development of ICT in the country and also market the country as an ICT investment destination. If you examine this mandate, it appears that, the ICT Board is actually responsible for everything ICT in the country, from advisor to Government to implementer of some “light house” projects. It cuts across policy advisory, strategy formulation and project design and implementation. Although the main pillars are Advisory, Marketing, Investment Facilitation and Project management, performing these tasks may require policy, regulatory and even legal interventions at some point.

This in itself posses major challenges for the Board, given that there are already existing institutions which are doing some of what the Board is supposed to do. A case in point is the National Communication Secretariat (NCS) under the same ministry that has been “advisor to the Government” since the enactment of the Kenya Communications Act of 1997 and the Government IT Services (GITS) under the Ministry of Finance. What I must point out from the onset, though, is the Board’s openness and the willingness to collaborate with other players both within and outside government to perform their mandate. But this is another story for another day.

For now, let’s examine what I mean by IT Governance, since this in itself is a controversial subject. This is sometimes referred to as e-Governance and should not be confused with e-Government. The Centre for Information Systems Research (CISR) at MIT defines IT Governance as the framework for decision rights and accountabilities to encourage desirable behavior in the use of IT or ICT if you want.

IT Governance is driven by the need for closer interaction and involvement with stakeholders both within and outside government. In today’s development lingo, this would be termed as multi-stakeholder participation which emphasizes on integrating the three "C's" of Cooperation, Consensus and Community. IT Governance is not about the specific decisions made, but rather about determining who makes each type of decision, who has input into the decision, and how one is held accountable for their role. This, to me sounds like what the ICT Board is trying to do or address.

Until very recently, it was difficult to point to one organization in government where ICT issues be they policy, strategic or implementation could be handled effectively. Several organizations had bits and pieces of “mandate” to do this and that despite the cross-cutting nature of ICT. This encouraged duplication of efforts, un-aligned priorities, confusion and even unhealthy competition between government ministries and departments. Governance is a key enabler of any transformation and clear active central governance is essential in federated organizations with distributed decision making to achieve strategic outcomes.

I would encourage Mr. Kukubo and his able team to take on the IT Governance challenge in the country and carefully craft the governance model that will be simple, participative and inclusive, formal yet flexible and one that will support the alignment of government-wide and departmental decisions. This way, I promise you, Kenya will alter the current BRIC+9 arrangement.