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.