Hi All,

I am ashamed to be an information technology professional, we have failed our country yet again by taking the high road and spending all our time lambasting politicians for issues such as the media bills yet we are no better. Last time I checked there was no profession like politician but there is information technology.

Why am I concentrating on a none Obama issue at such a time when the entire world & africa have their eyes facing Washington, because that will not stop crop failures, starvation of innocent children or reduce of fuel costs.

Last week's head lines where scary  to say the least, our food security reserves where sold off to Sudan & a revelation on the disapperarance of millions of litres of fuel from under the nostrils of KRA, KPC & GOK.

Stop that thought, none of this events has anything to do with the media bill as it had not been signed when this activitites where going on & the politicians are not to blame either as they are generally not farmers but peddlers of promises and inuendo.  The buck stops here with me & you the so called information technology experts, gurus, kemenyis . . .

All we have done is blame the lack of high speed internet access for everthing from failed marriages to space travel, yet we would have spent our energys developing solutions to stop this age old issue of famine and petty theft instead of lamenting over irrelevancies and red herrings.  Information is power, thus us as information technology professionals weld more power than even the proverbial pen.

So now that I have your undivided attention here is my point, we have proven and tested national wireless connectivity network provided by SafariCom, Zaine & Telkom/Orange yet it takes us 9 months to notice that not enough maize was planted.  You tell me what the cost would be to setup a land utilisation database with regular updates, I will not waste my finger grease trying to discuss this you all now this is a no brainer.

Fuel disappears from a storage tank and no one noticed it was missing for a whole year until some fellow followed a routine year end procedure of taking stock take an act that resulted in his firing for not getting permission from the chief executive, whose holding the smoking gun I ask?

Do KPC & ministry of agriculture actual have IT personnel on their payroll? Fire them, then the entire ICT Board, ICT Secretary to the cabinet, entire staff of the directorate of e-government, entire staff of government information technology services & anyone else who is mandated with the responsibility of advicing government on issues of technology. Not forgetting one Dr. Mutua, yes Dr. Ndemo too.

We cannot be discussing call centres, bpo, ID card application monitoring, electronic passport applications, issues that will impact less than 1% of the population while leaving out a strategic issue like food security and fuel supply.

Obama as president of the USA, the landing of 3 marine cables & the revision of the media bill is not the fix all for our problems here where we are, the world is at war & if we cannot feed our troops how do we expect to battle?  Lets look at technology as a means to an end & not an end in itself.  Lets use the available technology to solve real problems as that is the only legacy we can leave behind.

Regards
Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
Kenya