A Green Paper aimed at revamping South Africa’s current misaligned national information and communications technology (ICT) policies has been published for public comment.

The 102-page, 12-chapter National Integrated ICT Policy Green Paper deals with the need to amend and integrate policies and regulations to take account of the rapid changes in ICT in recent years.

The last major review of the ICT sector took place in the 1990s, with divided White Papers, "developed in isolation", on telecommunications, broadcasting and postal services.

“Today, with the convergence of technologies, it is hardly possible to talk to each of these key ICT sectors separately, given their interconnections,” Communications Minister Yunus Carrim said in the introduction.

The Department of Communications (DoC) embarked on the policy overhaul in 2012 to realign its policies with government’s developmental goals and provide a platform for South African companies to further develop the sector to compete globally.

The Green Paper outlined policy aims and strategies for ICT research and development, human capital development, application-development promotion, manufacturing support, investment in ICT backbone infrastructure and examining trends for digitising government to increase the use of ICT.

The paper, which Cabinet approved in December, was a culmination of the critical research on the frameworks governing ICT, broadcasting, investment and manufacturing and postal services, besides others, undertaken by a DoC-appointed 22-member panel headed by Joe Mjwara.

South Africa had not yet taken full advantage of the possibilities and opportunities created by the convergence and digitisation of communications technologies, Carrim explained.

The rapid expansion and fast-paced developments in technology and the dramatically changing ICT landscape had seen an unprecedented rise in the number of people connected to voice, video and Internet services globally.

“The fragmented approach adopted at the advent of democracy does not [increase] efficiencies and, in future, will increasingly hamper the capacity of the sector to fulfil socioeconomic development. The silo approach to the sector needs to be reviewed so that we do not inadvertently create a digital divide, where access to quality communications services, technologies, infrastructure and content is a privilege of the elite, rather than a right for all,” the document highlighted.

The paper pointed to the need to fully include South Africa’s growing population, which increased from 37.8-million to 52-million between 1993 and 2011, with the number of households rising 4.6-million to 14.5-million. Per capita income had also increased from R11 000 to R64 000 in the same period.

Interested stakeholders have 30 days from January 24 to provide input, with public hearings expected to start at the end of February 2014.