For some time now I have been feeling quite despondent about the state of ICT in South Africa. More specifically, I am concerned about ICT usage within the public sector – or the lack thereof. ICT, when used correctly, can be a great tool to transform government.

We witnessed this first hand in the City of Cape Town, where my team and I drove an ICT led strategic transformation of a typical South African “dysfunctional” municipality. We implemented a people, process and technology platform that could be used for successive waves of business transformation initiatives, resulting in the City of Cape Town today arguably being the best run municipality in the country – from an administrative perspective.

While there is a lot of political debate about the social policies of the City with points and counterpoints between the ANC and DA – “open toilets”, “not caring for the poor”, etc., there is very little debate about the administrative efficiency and effectiveness within the City, nor with the unprecedented level of information that is available to politicians and officials.

And clearly there should not be a debate. The Smart City strategy underpinning all of this argued for a highly integrated process and technology platform enabling a fully networked organization to deliver consistent services from anywhere in the City. This strategy was drawn up and approved as part of the Unicity Commission, which had joint representation of both the ANC and DA. The key project of the strategy, the ERP implementation, was started under a DA administration, went live under an ANC administration with some benefits realization, which was further enhanced under the subsequent DA administration. Therefore there should be no debate – both parties played a role in establishing the process and technology platform that underpins the City of Cape Town – a powerful, but rare occurrence of politicians not playing party political games, but doing what is truly in the best interest of the people. This was not about cheap party political point scoring but about truly trying to transform the way that government worked – giving effect to the Batho Pele (people first) principles. And it is time that we started to learn from it. It shows us what is possible, and we should be holding this up as a mirror to the rest of the public sector when it comes to ICT.

So let’s start talking about some of the issues. We are failing in this country when it comes to ICT. South Africa is ranked around 25th in the world in terms of the size of our GDP, and yet, in terms of ICT development we are ranked 62nd (and we have been consistently dropping).

We need to face up to fact that we have a problem. I was at the SITA Govtech conference last year, and I was most surprised to see that on the last day there was a birthday party and many self-congratulating speeches celebrating 10 years of achievements of the GITOC (Government IT Officers Council).

We, I don’t know. According to the rest of the world, we have not had achievements, nor have we had “limited achievements”, we have actually dropped in the rankings.

It is time that we faced up to this – because if we cannot acknowledge that we have a problem, we will not be able to fix it. It’s like alcoholism – the first step is to acknowledge that you have a problem. Interestingly, in the same month that SITA and the GITOC were patting themselves on the back, the ANC National General Council review document raised the following concerns about ICT in the country:

That the sector lacks a coherent National ICT Policy that support the developmental path for the benefit of our people, especially the historically disadvantaged and those in the rural areas of our country.

ICT programmes currently pursued by different tiers of government are uncoordinated, do not work in tandem and at times have conflicting objectives.

The situation contributes to the failure to bridge the digital divide and the perpetuation of a situation in which significant numbers of people do not have access to government, government services and information communication technologies.

The lack of coherent interoperable networks and services at the various tiers of government, preventing the emergence of a single online window to access automated government services to citizens, is a symptom of problems of misalignment of priorities and misdirected state interventions at the various tiers of government.

There is as yet no systematic plan within government to achieve the online automated government services. Each department, agency, tier of government is operating in silo mode resulting in a considerable cost to the taxpayers.

The ANC has decided on its 5 key priorities. Yet there is as yet no blue print or coherent consideration as to how the ICT’s are to be used to fast track the achievement of these priorities. How can the information communications technologies improve educational and health delivery? How can the ICT’s create jobs? How can the ICT’s help in rural development? What is the role of the ICT’s in combating crime and corruption? ICT’s are enablers that must be integrated in all our national campaigns as they make work faster and easier to be accessed by all.

Policies pursued have not eradicated the problems inherited from our apartheid past.

The ownership patterns, the deployment of the infrastructure and the skills base are still echoing trends that defined the ICT sector prior to democratisation. Providing an opportunity to all South Africans on an equitable basis will require approaches that will fast track transformation in the sector, train new practitioners and provide a skills base that is reflective of the South African population. Important in this regard is the deployment of these technologies in the previously disadvantaged areas in schools, clinics, hospitals, government offices and service delivery points which to all practical purposes are not currently connected.

The adoption and use of the ICTs in particular the internet and broadband services is slack, leading to a situation in which South Africa has lost its competitive positioning. Even though South Africa led the African continent in terms of telephony penetration in the 90s and internet uptakes, we are currently rated at number 12 in Africa.

We need to attend to the reasons for South Africa’s decline in international rankings and other indices”

So clearly the ruling party has serious concerns about the ICT sector, and does not share the optimism of the administration. I think that the ANC has hit the nail on the head with the concerns that it raises. The key issue is what to do about it. A lot of what I see happening with the national approaches is a simple change of the actors, who are following the same old script. Einstein is often quoted as saying “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results”. We need to do something radically different.

Via this blog and a few other channels, I am hoping to start a dialogue about the issues and see if, via debate and discussion, we can start to develop answers and solutions that can take us forward. In my more than 20 years in the ICT industry, I have come to realize that we have such talent, creativity and energy in this industry. If this can be channeled and focused, I am sure that we can find ways to solve the problems that we face. So, I am not asking people to agree with me and the sentiments that I have expressed. I am asking people to agree that we have a problem and to start talking.