When it comes to policies that will improve South Africa’s digital agenda, government needs to speed up the pace of implementing these frameworks.
This is according to Charmaine Houvet, senior director for government affairs at Cisco, during a virtual interview with ITWeb.
The state has often times faced criticism for taking too long to update regulations, or being too slow to create enabling policy, particularly in establishing an enabling environment for the digital economy.
There has been, however, concerted effort to get a few legislative pieces out for public comment; for example, the draft by-law for the deployment of electronic communications infrastructure and radio frequency spectrum policy.
The draft “Next-Generation Radio Frequency Spectrum Policy” was released last month, giving the public time to share their comments until the closing date (20 October).
Houvet agrees it’s been “quite busy” on the policy front, adding the policies haven’t been such a dramatic departure from the initial National Integrated ICT Policy White Paper of 2016.
However, government must prioritise the timelines of implementing the legislative pieces, she emphasises.
“Government has always been very clear that they’ll always take into account the needs of the sector and they always ensure that our voices are heard in these different collaborations, but I do believe that an area that could be strengthened from government is just to ensure…it goes out there and implements a lot of what they say they need to implement.”
Taking the lead
Recalling some of the stakeholder engagements as part of the Presidential Commission on 4IR, Houvet notes what constantly came up was that policy wasn’t the issue per se, but rather leadership going out and implementing.
“It doesn’t mean we just look to the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies. We actually need the whole of government to come together and to start to look at South Africa’s digital agenda, and we need to look at how these different frameworks and objectives can be applied across all government spheres and entities.”
The Cisco government affairs exec states it’s fine to have all the different committees that are appointed with overseeing the development of this transformation plan, roadmap, etc, because there’s a lot of rigour put into the process.
However, every single person in the commission pointed out that what needs to happen when these amazing policies – that talk to digital transformation – are brought together is to work with government to implement them.
“We know that there’s a digital divide, we’re aware of the challenge of digital skills adoption and digital skills acceleration, quality of service, etc, but I still do believe there are areas where we can actually move the pace of getting these policies translated into actionable promise.”
She points out that during lockdown, what was quite apparent was the sudden transition of the majority of people to online. Government went ahead and issued emergency spectrum on a temporary basis. “We waited for decades and suddenly they could do it.”
Furthermore, in terms of the draft by-law for wayleave approvals, industry stakeholders highlighted its importance for the deployment of electronic communications infrastructure.
She comments: “The ICT industry went to cooperative governance and they managed to get that process addressed in terms of an emergency policy. There are hot pockets of excellence where these things can be done and that’s what I’d love to see more of.”
Priority areas
Houvet points out that South Africa’s ICT sector holds a lot of promise.
Like many of her counterparts in the industry, Houvet stresses that the country’s IT skills shortage needs to be urgently addressed, adding more needs to be done to demystify the sector.
“We’re seeing quite a significant shortfall in terms of some of the more prominent roles, especially when it comes to cloud and security.
“The skills shortage ranks high and not just for South Africa − it’s a global issue. The pandemic created great impetus for digitalisation, acceleration and uptake, and off the back of that, we’re starting to see the rise of hybrid work and how to enable it.
“We’re starting to see that cyber crime is on the increase, with an increase in its severity and prevalence. With remote work, we’re starting to see an emergence of new cyber security threats and businesses realising they have to up security.
“Businesses should prioritise cyber security, protecting personal information and sensitive company data.”
She concludes: “We also need lots of conversations around policies touching on issues around cloud, data, the metaverse, energy-efficiency, as well as WiFi 6 for connectivity.”
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