PIAC no talk-shop

By Leon Engelbrecht for SAP

Advisory council meeting, 17 Mar 2008

President Thabo Mbeki's International Advisory Council on the Information Society and Development (PIAC on ISAD) is no talk-shop and compares well with international examples, says SAP ambassador Les Hayman.

Hayman has sat on similar bodies in his native Australia, as well as in Malaysia and Singapore, and gave input to the Indian government early in its ICT drive.

"I think we are achieving things here..." he said in advance of this weekend's meeting of the body. The Australian body, during his time, was by contrast "a bit of a gab-fest". Hayman said he stepped down after a year "because we were not achieving anything".

"It was turning me into a grumpy old man," he noted. He was scathing of several efforts dressed up as skills and capital investments. One of these was a PC assembly plant that reassembled PCs built in Asia and knocked down for export to Australia. "The sum of the transfer was teaching Australian workers to use a screwdriver."

Malaysia, said Hayman, understood early on that it could not build an industry on low-cost production, as some other country would soon undercut its advantage. This was also the case in India, which rapidly moved from a low-cost supplier to a high quality IT industry.

"You can't build strategy on low cost; you must build on quality and an ability to execute." Hayman explained that this is why China is facing a "problem". "Their quality is rubbish in many cases because they need to cut corners to stay a low-cost producer. That is not sustainable.

Returning to the issue of PIAC-equivalents, he said Singapore uses a model quite unlike anyone else. "You have to understand they run the country like a business." Their version has a formally constituted board with considerable authority and decisions are binding on government departments. As a result, a decision some years ago to deregulate Singapore's telecoms sector "happened within three months. Things happen very fast," he said.

Richness of challenges

The most difficult challenge for SA's PIAC is priorities, according to Hayman. "...each time you sit down there is so much to do. There is no lack of opportunity, but which give the best return?"

He answers the question by looking at education: "The greatest asset SA needs to build is skilled people. What is lacking in SA is professional management. Building a culture of management is important for the country's ability to effectively compete on the world market. You can't compete without leadership."

Part of the problem lies in the short lifetimes of senior business executives, who are seldom around long enough to oversee the implementation of their schemes, the SAP advocate noted. "Very few CEOs today understand what to do in the modern business environment. We need to train a whole new generation of leaders. We need better leadership than exists today - leaders, managers and board members."