Why should Namibia send its people to study in those countries? Why can’t our government set up its technological institutions focusing on software development and automation of industrial processes here in Namibia and then, we can import skills and tools to develop our own software and a process management industry of our own. From my point of view setting up technological institutions that go with the national Vision 2030 will create a foundation for strong technological capacity for Namibia, a better chance of implementing e-government successfully, reducing import rates on software products, reducing government expenditure on software development, products and maintenance. It will also create job opportunities for Namibians in software development and process automation jobs that are currently outsourced by the government and most of all, software development skills will drive Namibia to a knowledge-based economy. And it will surely create a foundation for the industrialized economy that Namibia is dreaming about, since we all know that software systems and the automation of process are the main tools in creating an industrialized economy and that is what we should aspire to in Namibia.
Has the Namibian government signed agreements for software development? If it is the case from my economic and technological point of departure I see this as a betrayal of our national Vision 2030, a clear failure to secure our technological future. It also shows that our government does not have any trust in its own Information Technology (IT) professionals even though we are the people to be blamed with any failures associated with the implementation of e-government, which is so disappointing.
Outsourcing of software development will never create job opportunities for Namibians and it will never develop skills that will benefit us in the near future, but it increases the rate of poverty based on the fact that taxpayers money meant to fight poverty is being spend on something we as human beings have the capability to develop, but we have instead failed ourselves. It leads to the loss of value of our currency since it increases imports, which I find unnecessary and avoidable. I was so disappointed when I heard that IT professionals in the public sector are downgraded by their own government when they are the people most needed by the government for the promotion of e-government and the automation of service processes.
Our government has opted to downgrade its own IT professionals so it can outsource their jobs. That is a wrong move by my comrades. Outsourcing by the government is indicative of negligence in building and nurturing the technological capacity of our own human resources and also demonstrates a failure to deal with the skills deficit that exists in the country. Outsourcing is a clear failure in the long-term and undermines the development of our own IT sector. My main concern with government outsourcing is who will maintain those systems when the original developers have gone back to their countries? This will surely lead to endless spending by the government, since there will always be a need for such persons, who will have to be flown back into the country for system maintenance. And one more thing, what our government is failing to understand is that maintaining a software system is much more expensive than buying or developing it. Our government is being bribed with 80 percent discounts in buying software packages. Who will give you an 80 percent discount and not knowing what they are doing?
Through my research I have also learned that our government (Ministry of Health and Social Services) bought a packaged e-health system from an India company, which failed in its implementation stage and it cannot even integrate with external systems. How much did that system cost the government? And who lost money there? It is the taxpayers.
Let me make my point clear here, if systems are successful in India or China it does not guarantee they will succeed in Namibia. We should consider the population, level of education, technological capacity, computer literacy statistics between our country and India or China even before we opt to buy such systems, and we should know that Namibia is a developing country and countries like India and China are grouped as developed countries and it took them time to develop their people’s knowledge and skills to be where they are today. They did not fly as Namibia is trying to do.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Ndemwiinekela Fillemon Munyala
Quelle/Source: New Era, 25.04.2014
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