ICT Board Progress Report and Status update

As a major implementer of government ICT projects I shall accept that the ICT Board has not communicated as effectively as we should have and I am therefore not surprised to read some asking what we have been up to. I accept full responsibility for this.

I have effected a change in approach effective today to widen communication from the board to include project progress details rather than reporting what we consider major achievements. Our previous approach was developed before we increased our staff count and beefed up our skills which we have now concluded.

I will be brief and yes, this is being brief!

The board has divided its projects into five pillars as follows each headed by a Project Manager.

Digital Inclusion. These are projects concerned with providing access to the masses. Specifically this includes,
- KENET bandwidth support project (for providing universities bandwidth, so far 64 tertiary institutions in Kenya have been connected).
  - Upgrading university networks where they were not optimal and purchasing and providing 200mb of bandwidth. This has resulted in reliable broadband availability to all students in public and private universities.
  - Board has initiated the development of a world class network operating centre to manage this network
- Digital Villages Pasha Project. I provided an update on this in an earlier email
- Laptops for universities project, which is aimed to making it affordable for students to purchase laptops. This project is currently awaiting approvals to be formerly launched.

Egovernment Shared Services. Working with the egovernment secretariat and the ministry of local government, the aim is to provide a shared services platform for the delivery of key government applications that are run government-wide, including financial systems, HR, procurement. The status here is that we are concluding the consultancy award.
- Other projects in progress include
  - The development of the government network operational centre
  - The migration of government telephone systems to an IP based unified communicated system
  - ICT Board fundraising efforts have resulted in a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation towards the support of shared services development for local government. Details of this will be made available once the project has commenced.

Egovernment Applications. This project relates mainly to projects to digitize key government registries,

o Operationalisation of the Outsourcing Business by Governments: The State Law Office. The Board has been supporting the State Law Office in Digitising and eventually automating its operations: To this end, the project to digitise the entire company registry has already been awarded, and the contractors are mobilising teams. The immediate benefits we are seeing are:

· A total of 300 NEW direct jobs in the BPO sector will be created for the digitisation project alone.

· Operationalisation of the Outsourcing Business by Governments through mainstreaming of documents conversion

o Broadband Internet for Government

· A total of 80MB of Fibre –based Internet connectivity has been delivered to the government through an initiative by the Board. All the head office government ministries in Nairobi are enjoying this capacity, and there are plans to take the same to the entire provincial and district offices through the National Fibre Backbone Infrastructure. This is a first

o Capacity Building

· As a partnership with Microsoft, the Head of Security for Microsoft Mr Roger Halbheer will be giving talk on IT Security Best practice to stakeholders. He is already in town and the Board has organised a specific session for GOK officers on 2/2/2010.

· As a partnership with Oracle East Africa, The ICT Board will be conducting a 2 day detailed workshop on shared services implementation for leading government officials.

· As a partnership with Microsoft, the ICT Board is completing its 20 seat eservices training centre at the new offices under completion on the 12^th floor of Teleposta Towers.

· As a partnership with another leading global player, the Board will be setting up a state of the art video conferencing facility to be used by the BPO and other players in international marketing to minimise marketing costs. It will also be used for training.

o Pilot Project for computerised digital land database

· A partnership programme with a leading global player is working with the Board and Ministry of to establish a Google Maps enabled Digital Land Database. Shortly we shall be announcing the outcome of the pilot project of a web based digital lands platform as a precursor to the national mapping and digitisation exercise

o The Digitisation of the Judiciary

· This is ongoing.

4. BPO/ITES. (It enabled services) The Board has recognised that promoting this sector includes widening its definition to include all the organizations that provide information and communications based services employing mainly IT based skills. The Board has therefore brought into focus the growing and highly entrepreneurial local software based business.

· Software Certification. We are reviewing bids by local and international firms to establish a software certification standard for Kenya and certify local software.

· BPO Centre of excellence project

1. We have communicated this in the media before. We are concluding awarding a contract to a consortium of consultants to establish a BPO training centre of excellence for Kenya as part of developing the skills base. This compliments private sector efforts.

· BPO ITES marketing

1. This is an area under review to focus not so much on deals for individual businesses here (business to business) but rather on targeting blue chip global players to set up in Kenya. This approach has been necessitated by speaking to various contemporaries around the world on the dollar return of attending all the various outsourcing events. In any event, there is a discussion on-going to substantially increase the resources allocated to these 2 components and more details will be availed.

2. Last year we supported Kenya BPO society to attend the following 3 events. We did minimise our spend per event in order to manage our budget.

1. Birmingham Call Centre awards

2. The South Africa BPO week

3. ITU ICT World Forum

· BPO ITES Capacity building.

1. We continue to provide the sector with training in standard, exposure to best practices and opportunities for partnership (such as the forthcoming ICT Board sponsored tour of South Africa’s BPO sector in March 2010)

· Multinational partnerships. Many of the largest outsourcers in the world are already represented in Kenya in other capacities; some of them are large banks, large IT firms, and large oil companies. We speak to their principles regularly to pitch our value proposition of Kenya as an attractive emerging destination. One large IT firm (not be named, has just opened up a 700 seat technical support centre in Tunisia for French speaking global support, they are interested in setting up one here in Kenya. The gestation period for large deals such as this is a minimum of 18 months from conception to ‘ground breaking’

5. Local Content Development. Having recruited a new project manager for this in January 2010, work has commenced to take forward this project.

o The Grants Manual that will be the basis for the ICT Board grant disbursement is nearing completion and we expect to launch our call for proposals in due course

o We have partnered with a major global player on capacity development for local IT and content development sector capacity building to include training, and skills development. An announcement will be made in due course.

o Our new content project head is reviewing the www.tandaa.co.ke with a view to upgrading it to provide a meeting point for Kenyan digital content providers

Towards its internal capacity, the Board has contracted Deloitte Consulting to provide Project Management implementation framework for the Board and the department of egovernment with the following objectives

1. Skills upgrade in project management with an emphasis on certification of Key staff t implement multiple projects

2. The establishment of a national project management system for government ICT projects in line with international best practices.

Further to this update, the ICT board has concluded the development of its 3 year strategic plan and will be inviting stakeholders for a validation workshop in last week of Feb once venue details are finalized.

www.ict.go.ke

Ends