Government's recently appointed ICT policy review panel is "firmly on track" and has decided to employ a three-phased approach to the long-awaited overhaul of SA's ICT legislation.
This is according to the Department of Communications (DOC) and comes after the 22-member panel, under the direction of communications minister Dina Pule, held its inaugural meeting over Thursday and Friday last week.
The DOC says the meeting was held with the purpose of getting the ball rolling on the policy review task at hand, allocating responsibilities, designing an apt strategy, and addressing administrative issues.
Three-part plan
The three-phased approach, unanimously agreed on by the panel, will include a review of the national ICT policy, from 1994 to the present.
Phase one, says the DOC, is an assessment of the policy environment over this period; phase two focuses on the development of a discussion document that will form part of the green paper process; and the last phase will focus on the actual creation of a new ICT policy framework - moving towards the final white paper on ICT policy.
Pule says the department is "firmly on track" to deliver the ICT policy, which she says will boost SA on to the next level of economic growth and improve the state's quality of services.
Last year April, at the DOC's National Integrated ICT Policy Colloquium, the department said it expected to start implementing the new policies in 2014.
At the time, Pule said the review would have to remove aspects of legislation that were irrelevant and that were hindering economic growth and social cohesion.
Set up in November last year, Pule's appointed panel includes the likes of former Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys; former councillor at the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) and current chief corporate services officer at Neotel, Tracy Cohen; controversial billionaire businessman Atul Gupta; academic and regulatory specialist Charley Lewis (currently senior lecturer at the Link Centre); member of the board of the Universal Service and Access Agency of SA Shaun Pather; and former ICASA CEO Nkateko "Snakes" Nyoka.
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