The Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA) has urged ICT practitioners to become ‘activists’ for ethical, equitable ICT policy development and access as the country moves into a post-Covid era.

Speaking at the national IITPSA AGM, IITPSA President Thabo Mashegoane said: “This is an important time in the history and development of our country. As we emerge from a time of massive uncertainty and begin to hope that vaccines will help to normalise life as we know it, it is clear that our world will be dominated by technology and that it will be central to everything we do.

Policies are now being put in place that will address issues such as universal access and government e-services; while technology is being embedded into healthcare, education and even social grants.

As ICT professionals, our time has come to step up to help drive progress and policy-making. The IITPSA, our members and stakeholders across the ICT sector, have a crucial role to play. We, as the industry body, are consulted on policy shaping, and we in turn consult our members, who know every aspect of the industry, the needs of customers, the impacts of their technologies and how best to deploy and use them. Policy makers need our guidance and inputs now.”

New IITPSA Board members named, MSS launched

New IITPSA office bearers and two new Non-Executive Directors have been elected, following the IITPSA National AGM.

The new office bearers are President and Board Chairperson Admire Gwanzura, who was previously Vice-President, and new Vice-President and Vice-Chair Senele Goba.  Treasurer Karel Matthee was re-elected.

The new Non-Executive Directors, Professor Lynn Futcher and Josine Overdevest, will join the board, which comprises 12 members, 11 of whom are Non-Executive directors.

IITPSA CEO Tony Parry said that, in spite of a difficult year for the country, the IITPSA had grown its stakeholder relationship and engagement efforts, stepping up the number of webinars and chapter and special interest group activities it staged. “It was the year of the rise of the webinar, with multiple webinars and stakeholder engagement activities throughout the year. Coming up are many more webinars, as well as events such as the Computer Programming Olympiad, JCSE - IITPSA Skills Survey report and IITPSA President’s Awards,” he said.

The IITPSA also announced that it has launched a new Member Self-Service (MSS) platform, allowing members to update and manage their own membership information and engage more easily with the Institute. In addition, the IITPSA has passed a resolution to change its Code of Conduct to the IITPSA Code of Ethics, and its Code of Practice to the IITPSA Code of Good Practice, stemming from the IITPSA Social and Ethics Committee’s work to align the IITPSA Codes with the new IFIP Code of Ethics which was approved last year.