Moving ICT from policy to strategy
Published:Saturday | July 6, 2013 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
Three pieces of content in The Sunday Gleaner dated June 30, 2013 led me to think how often the dots between policy and strategy, really the implementation of policy, evinces the missed interconnections.
Our policymakers talk a lot about the role acquisition of ICT skill sets - and continued upskilling - would play in ramping the national economy to the global knowledge economy. We seem to understand that our e-governance initiatives would both push and pull dissemination of the baseline technologies and practices inherent to mastery.
From the various pronouncements, we seem to arrive at the point of understanding mobility and Internet must be central to any deployment strategy. Good so far.
Sundry others wax poetic on the opportunities that exist for mobile applications development, second-level business process outsourcing, and the like as conduits for access to this global knowledge ecosystem. On top of all this, there has been much articulation that suggests we understand the role the education system must play in building national capacity to engage the desired Information Society and, by its provident exploitation, the benefits to be accrued from the knowledge economy.
What bothers is the hit-and-miss incoherence moving from policy to strategy.
First, the hit - and a good one. e-Learning Jamaica Company Limited (e-LJam) advertised on Page F10 for "provision of tablets and services for e-learning project in schools". In the list of published requirements, the tenderer is required to provide tablets 'with management support systems' for, among other things, 'app downloading and updating including project created apps and e-books'.
So e-LJam gets it. They know the tablet - as tool - is less than useful absent appropriate content towards effective instruction and the attendant improved learning outcomes. And they prepared the table for accepting open educational resources, inclusive of locally prepared and mastered content. Kudos to Yvonne, Avril, Izett and company.
On the same Page F10, right next to the e-LJam advert, is juxtaposed the 'miss'; prima facie evidence of this strategic incoherence. Fiscal Service Limited is in the act of utlising IDB-provided financing for "procurement of an enterprise content management (ECM) solution for the Government of Jamaica (GOJ)".
Under 'Description of Works', the first of seven presumably absolute requirements is: "1. A Customised Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Enterprise Content Management software solution to be installed."
Maybe the writer truly intended to redefine the normal meaning of the acronym COTS; Commercial Off-the-Shelf, for those of us who came up and through the business. Or, perhaps purely by serendipity, the term 'customised' was used.
What seems mindful, however, is that FSL appears to understand that no single content management system can provide all the services required for the five agencies targeted for the services, hence the 'customisation' requirement.
And herein is the perfect opportunity to converge several oft-stated public policy goals; capacity-building, especially in developing ICT skills in software development around mobility and Internet, integrating content mastering for social development; collaborating with the education system; reducing the burden on the public purse for loan servicing.
Even the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has weighed in on the role public procurement can play in local ICT sector development: See
It is the perfect opportunity to use Free and Open Source (FOSS) platforms for enterprise content management and advance all of the above. Given the parlous state of our national finances and the several policy objectives that converge around it, FOSS should be the default vehicle for deployment of public-sector software-enabled platforms. This is a low-hanging fruit for both public policy and decisionmakers.
The minister would be well advised to kill this procurement for cause. Let's get holistic on the policy-strategy implementation front.
CARLTON SAMUELS