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SA national ICT policy on the brink

Jon Tullett
By Jon Tullett, Editor: News analysis
Johannesburg, 17 Apr 2012

South African ICT risks slipping further behind its peers without substantive action to develop and act on a national ICT policy. Industry observers offered cautious optimism for the process ahead of the Department of Communications' National ICT Policy Colloquium, but warned that a continued cycle of discussion without action could actively harm the economy.

If we are to see signs of real progress from minister of communications Dina Pule, the DOC, the colloquium and the policy process, some specific steps will need to be taken. A national ICT policy is only the first step, but a crucial one. Implementation and measurement must follow.

Going backwards

“Without a policy, the country won't be in the same position a year from now. It will be worse,” predicts Mukesh Chulani, research manager at IDC Government Insights Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. Aside from slipping competitively as a nation, government departments will continue to establish disconnected ICT projects, which will make drafting a cohesive overarching policy more difficult.

The lack of the promised national ICT policy, after years of debate and discussion without progress, is starting to bite. “We are being left seriously behind by Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria in terms of attracting investment and industry with technology,” says Adrian Schofield, president of the Computer Society South Africa. “They will become the economic engines of the continent.”

Kenya, in particular, has an active policy of encouraging ICT development and investment, with aggressive goals to stimulate its ICT sector with local enterprise and foreign investment.

The World Economic Forum's Global Information Technology Report 2012 placed South Africa 72 out of 142 countries in terms of network readiness, picking out skills development, access costs and infrastructure development in particular as areas needing improvement.

Although SA was the second highest sub-Saharan country in the WEF ranking (Mauritius was higher, in 53rd place), that position is vulnerable to other African countries pushing hard to improve their positions. And the position marks a dangerous drop from previous years, Chulani points out. “SA was in the mid-30s in the 2000s; the drop is because of the lack of a policy outlining how technology should be deployed and aligned with the country's developmental goals.”

It is not just national competitiveness that is suffering. Some long-term problems have suddenly rushed to meet a department which desperately needs to take some tough decisions. Dithering on critical decisions like the switch to digital terrestrial television (DTT) and the digital bonanza of freed-up spectrum, which will follow - dithering which has turned what should have been long-term strategy into a short-term crisis.

It's a problem that has been getting steadily worse, and will continue to do so until the first step - a national ICT policy - is taken, and even that will fail unless real action is taken.

Success stories or symptoms of failure?

In the absence of a national ICT policy, the private and public sectors have shown determination to succeed in spite of the national policy shortcomings. Government departments have fended for themselves, interpreting their objectives into ICT plans, and in some cases, bringing valuable services to the table. “The right person driving a project can achieve results despite the lack of official policy. We do have people with the right skills, willing to put them to use,” Schofield says. SARS and eNatis have demonstrated the government can use technology to achieve ambitious goals, he says.

But Chulani warns that those successful projects, no matter how laudable, are dangerous symptoms of the underlying problem. “The success stories like SARS and eNatis are due to departmental vision - they are internal, rather than led by government efforts. The absence of policy leads to sectoral or departmental initiatives. Over time, those become more entrenched, and it becomes more difficult to resolve because of those established individual initiatives.”

Without a policy, the country won't be in the same position a year from now. It will be worse

Mukesh Chulani, research manager, IDC Government Insights Middle East, Turkey, and Africa

Consolidating the requirements of multiple stakeholders, including government departments, agencies, SEOs and the private sector, is a mammoth task for the DOC as those projects become entrenched, with IT systems, suppliers, contracts, and processes built up around them.

And those services then fail to deliver their full potential, Chulani adds. “The book should be more than the sum of its words. The problem has been the absence of an overarching ICT policy that acknowledges the need to push service delivery.”

In the private sector, business does what it always does: adapts to maximise its potential, within whatever framework exists. “The good thing is business is pragmatic, it will do whatever it must to adapt and stay in business. But the bad thing is, as a result, there is no incentive to do the right thing in terms of social/community responsibility,” Schofield says. “For example, we had the BEE cycle, which should have resulted in a deep-seated philosophy of doing the right thing, but that hasn't really happened in ICT. If you just get the tick in the box, you're fine.”

Interdepartmental rivalry

Too many cooks

The historical perspective is not pretty. We have had a procession of single-year ministers (Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Siphiwe Nyanda, Roy Padayachie, Dina Pule) at the helm of the DOC, and it is easy to blame that disorganisation for the mess that is the South African ICT policy. But we have to look to the future: to fix the issues which are broken, make decisions on the urgent issues like DTT, and set milestones against which the department (and its peers) can demonstrate progress.
Right now, all eyes are on Pule as she tries to stabilise the DOC and take that first step. Because of the department's history, expectations are low, which means she has every chance to surprise us. Most observers expect the worst: vague long-term hand-waving without any measurable objectives, a lack of co-operation from other government departments, and eventually a new minister who will start all over again. That means almost anything positive which arises from the colloquium will surprise the pundits, and give Pule a bit of momentum to carry forward.

Another result of the silo approach is a lack of co-operation between departments, a problem which is also deepening as time goes by.

One solution could be to elevate the role of ICT policy into a new body - a cross-department initiative like the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster, or another department entirely - Schofield points out that the Justice Cluster hasn't yet demonstrated real co-operation, such as an integrated justice system. A complete fresh approach could “take the responsibility for ICT policy into a new department in the president's office, to get rid of the inter-departmental turf wars, synergise resources and have the mandate to act instead of talk”, Schofield says.

Chulani isn't so sure: “The creation of a super-ministry won't break down silos if they don't already share the vision,” he says, recommending that a more positive outcome would be a high-level national policy which could be readily adopted by all the relevant departments, without threatening their existing projects and policies.

Other countries have done well translating high-level goals into cross-department initiatives, with ICT playing an underpinning role, he says. “The Canadian ICT strategy focused on human capital, and tied it in to the national labour force strategy, and to immigration. Canadians are also very proud of their healthcare, and ICT is a fundamental part of it: services flow because of the ICT policy. Singapore took a different approach - enjoying the prosperity from being a shipping and logistics hub, the country set out the goal of becoming a technology hub with similar benefits.

In fact, Schofield says, there are numerous examples of countries reaping the benefit of co-ordinated national ICT policies being put into practice. “India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Mauritius, Rwanda, Kenya, Tunisia... I don't know offhand of any country that had a national ICT policy that went nowhere.”

South Africa will need to emulate the cross-department efforts of other countries to achieve its goals, Chulani says. “For example, if you commit to ICT to schools to push skills development. How does that take into account the diaspora that is under way [with skills leaving the country]? Do you plan to attract them back? What about sunrise and sunset industries, which will benefit or shrink?” From a simple goal, an education initiative now has tendrils reaching into immigration and industrial development. The richest view of your citizens can be achieved by ICT-enabling these services.”

Aiming too high

Part of the problem may be that the DOC is trying to do too much at once. The discussion document circulated before the colloquium ran to 112 pages of detailed background material covering many parts of the ICT industry, government ICT projects, policy issues and more. Chulani says a national ICT policy can be much simpler, more abstract, which could also provide a way to encompass those many disparate stakeholders without trying to tackle every issue specifically.

“Just focus on the overarching issues, and then roll that out across departments,” he says. “The rest will trickle down. You already have visionaries driving those successful projects, so loop them in. You've got to take step one - you have to just grab the snake by the head.”

“ICT is all about convergence,” Schofield concurs. “Silos split up responsibility.” But right now, he says, there is outright enmity between government departments, and any attempt to implement a policy will have to overcome that if it is to have any chance of success.

And drafting a policy - the process which has taken all these years - is only the first step. A national ICT policy will be meaningless if it is not put into action and turned to the advantage of the country. A clear articulation of responsibilities would be a solid indication of progress. ICT is a resource for every department, not just the DOC, and every department should be able to hang its own ICT-related ambitions and obligations on to the hook of a National ICT Policy.

“A strategy without sufficiently detailed action plan and metrics for success won't get South Africa anywhere,” Chulani says. He describes the process as a steady evolution of vision. Top-level national goals, outlined by the government, are interpreted into an ICT policy outlining how ICT can help meet those objectives. That policy should then trickle down through departments, with each expected to meet its own targets.

That may be expecting too much too soon, but the DOC can take the lead. “A win would be to have the minister assign specific responsibilities to heads of department in the DOC,” says Schofield. “Then we can look for regular reviews and interaction with stakeholders.”

Short-term versus long-term

A common theme in criticism of the DOC is the ratio of discussion to action. The department has been through numerous cycles of discussion, hampered by the procession of ministers through its doors, each taking time to get up to speed and evaluate their options, engage in consultation and make tentative steps towards strategic goals, before being replaced and restarting the process. Pule's highly regarded predecessor, Roy Padayachie, attempted to set short-term targets alongside long-term goals, but was reassigned (to be minister of public service and administration) before much progress could be made.

Among those long-term goals were universal access to broadband and a million ICT jobs by 2020, signed as the ICT Industry Competitiveness and Job Creation Compact. Minister Pule has committed to those targets, but Schofield says the targets are simply too vague and distant to be meaningful.

With the ministerial duties changing hands so frequently, Schofield says no one will ever be held to account for failing to meet objectives aiming at a moving target 20 years away. “The key is to get the DOC to think not in 10- to 15-year horizons, but in one- to two-year horizons.

“One million jobs in ICT: that's five times the current level,” Schofield says. “How are we going to employ them? How are we going to create companies and generate demand for products?” Those are short-term questions which should be answered with action plans, and then measured, he says. “We must have incentives for success, and penalties for failure.”

There's nothing inherently wrong with long-term plans, Chulani says, “as long as there are also detailed action plans”.

In this regard, government should be taking its lead from the private sector, Schofield says. “Policy processes should always be subject to regular review and update, at short intervals. The cop-out of setting goals 10, 15, 20 years ahead is that the politicians and bureaucrats are never held accountable for failure. Targets should be year-on-year, as they are in business.”

Odds of success

Assuming a national ICT policy is forthcoming, the pressure will be on each department to develop those action plans, and roll milestones and objectives into their existing targets.

The good news, says Schofield, is that results may follow quickly. “An implemented policy would have an effect within a year and a major effect within five years,” he says.

If the minister and her department are to make headway in bringing a national ICT policy to the table, and seeing it make a difference, industry will be looking for concrete signs of progress, starting with the output from the colloquium, building to a policy and action plans to come.

The track record of the department, however, stands against it, with observers openly pessimistic about the likelihood of real progress in the short-term. “The DOC doesn't appear to be focused on action, just talk,” Schofield says.

Unfortunately, repeated calls to the DOC for comment were unsuccessful.

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