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ICT review panel delivers final integrated policy recommendations

23rd April 2015

By: Natasha Odendaal

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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The Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services (DTPS) has reached one of the final milestones in the development of an integrated policy to transform and modernise South Africa’s information and communications technology (ICT) environment with the final recommendations published on Thursday.

Two years after the formation of a dedicated ICT policy review panel, chaired by Sipho Joe Mjwara, the final recommendations report on the way forward for the Integrated ICT Policy were handed to Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Dr Siyabonga Cwele in Pretoria.

The report held 168 recommendations that were the result of more than two years of “intensive research, discussion, debate and public consultations” and would serve as a basis for government’s imminent Integrated ICT Policy White Paper.

“The handover marks the start of the next phase as the country moves towards creating ICT policies that will enable ICT to play its facilitatory role in the radical socioeconomic transformation of our society,” the department said.

However, the report stated that a long road remained ahead to achieve the growth and redistribution and to build a more inclusive and equal society as envisaged in the National Development Plan (NDP) to which the policy was aligned.

South Africa had identified various measures and interventions to jump-start the economy and achieve its targeted 5% growth by 2019, in which the growth of the ICT sector would play a critical role.

The NDP noted that ICT would underpin the development of an inclusive, prosperous, “dynamic connected information society and a vibrant knowledge economy”.

“ICT will continue to reduce spatial exclusion, enabling seamless participation by the majority in the global ICT system, not simply as users but as content developers and application innovators,” the development plan pointed out.

“The panel has worked tirelessly to ensure that it has provided an integrated approach for future policy, such that the long-term 2030 vision, as espoused in our NDP, will indeed be achieved,” the report assured.

Inclusive development required access to infrastructure, devices and affordable services, as well as content, information, digital products, services and applications.

The panel narrowed its focus to regulatory principles and approaches; infrastructure and services; the digital society; audio and audiovisual content services; industry growth; and institutional frameworks to achieve the goal of a fully connected society.

The tabled regulatory principles and approaches dealt with core regulatory principles, green ICT policies and the open Internet, while the panel unpacked recommendations to establish and strengthen the infrastructure and services necessary to ensure universal access and affordability.

“The recommendations are cognisant that ICT infrastructure, together with the multitude of services that it enables and supports, is the invisible but indispensable component for developing the information society and building the knowledge economy,” the report noted.

The panel also put forth recommendations on the postal sector and related services in a converged society, and options to effectively manage the radio frequency spectrum.

The recommendations to develop a “digital society” touched on a national e-strategy, incorporating e-government, e-services and e-commerce strategies, as well as Internet governance.

The panel’s recommendations concerning audio and audiovisual content services encompassed the new multichannel, multiscreen and multiplatform environment, where audiences easily accessed broadcasting and broadcasting-like content “anywhere, anytime and anyhow”.

The panel also proposed strategies for the development of the ICT industry through coordination, transformation and investment, as well as expanding the national system of ICT research, development and innovation, electronics manufacturing and skills development.

Suggestions on institutional frameworks to build and strengthen institutions and institutional frameworks to support the implementation of policy recommendations had also been published.

The former Department of Communications, which had been split into the Department of Communications and the DTPS last year, initiated a policy review process in 2012, from which a framing paper emerged in April 2013, followed by a Green Paper in January 2014.

The department gazetted a discussion paper, incorporating the inputs received in response to the Green Paper, as well as views that were obtained from consultations held across South Africa’s nine provinces, in November.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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