Parliament's communications committee chairperson, Ismail Vadi, blames regulator ICASA, the Department of Communications and Parliament for the country's ICT malaise.
In a speech delivered earlier this week, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Vadi said the country's ICT policy had drifted into the doldrums after it had been a trendsetter for some time.
Vadi, a member of the ruling African National Congress, has been chairman of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications for two years. This is the first occasion that he has publically enunciated his vision and explained some of the committee's actions outside of the legislature.
“From being an ICT policy trendsetter in the early years of our democracy, we have lagged behind in comparison to other developing nations. We have lived through the lacklustre performance of political and departmental leadership in the previous administration. In the past five years, the Department of Communications could best be described as an ICT tail that belatedly tried to wag the dog. This was a period of policy incoherence, administrative obfuscation and ineffective leadership,” he said.
Vadi pointed to two examples of where policy direction, as given by former president Thabo Mbeki in his state of the nation addresses in 2005 and then in 2007 - about ongoing work to reduce telecommunications costs - had resulted in no action.
“For instance, we are today still grappling with the question of properly regulating mobile termination rates. These were not necessarily failures of former president Mbeki himself, but really of the Communications Ministry and the department that would have provided the policy objectives and targets for the Presidency. Even at the Parliamentary level, the Portfolio Committee on Communications saw a degree of leadership instability, with three chairpersons being appointed in five years, resulting in an oversight role that lacked continuity and, at times, clear focus.”
Vadi also attacked the regulator several times during his speech and accused ICASA of not taking its mandate seriously, especially with regard to the lowering of the cost of mobile termination rates.
He said the aim of the committee was not to undermine the independence of ICASA, but it had forced the regulator to make a public commitment to finalising the interconnection regulations by June 2010.
Despite all his comments about the ICT sector and its overall poor performance, Vadi indicated in his speech that he is still somewhat optimistic. He noted there is a new found energy in the Department of Communications since the appointment of Siphiwe Nyanda and Dina Pule as minister and deputy minister of communications, respectively.
Parliament is also playing its role as an oversight body and allowing for public debate on many of the issues that hamstring the country's ICT development, he said.
Vadi's vision for SA's ICT future is a society where every citizen has an e-mail account and a subsidised personal computer with free software; every home has a post-box, and radio and TV access; and every community has a technology centre within walking distance, where IT training is offered, e-government services are available and SME information can be accessed.
“The central challenges to realise this vision are firstly, who will fund this vision? Secondly, can we forge a willing partnership between government, the regulator, the private sector and civil society to realise this vision? And, thirdly, can we agree on who should lead the march to make this dream a reality?”
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