Office of the Prime Minister
National Information and Communications
Infrastructure Framework Study
Task Force
Addis Ababa
January 1999
Executive Summary
Ethiopia is in the process of economic transformation through Agriculture Development Led Industrialization strategy. This development strategy is devised with the view of decentralized financial and management approach and directed a number the Five-year development programmes.
For the proper implementation of the Five-year development programme, financial and material provisions as well as human resource development schemes have been drawn-up and put into operation. However, it has been felt that
there is an inadequate exploitation of information resources to effectively, implement and follow-up programmes and projects in all economic sectors. In order to address this problem, a number of fragmented computerization projects have been initiated. However, most of them have encountered serious failures and have not attained their goals.
there is very little understanding that information resources organized in all economic sectors are of national asset which shall be accessible and shareable.
This inadequate organization and utilization of information resources has negatively influenced the quality of project formulation, performance, follow-up and decision-making processes as well as exchange of experiences in both public and private sector development activities.
These problems can only be overcome by concerted efforts guided by a national policy framework. In the past, due to the limited attention given to the problem a lot of resources were invested in a disarrayed manner. This has led the Government to initiate framework development for infrastructure capacity building that will facilitate effective information flow and access mechanisms.
The main objective of this exercise is to indicate directions and approach for the establishment and implementation of an integrated, comprehensive and effective National Information and Communication Infrastructure Framework (
NICIF
).
To this end a Task Force has been organised. In order to make an assessment of the situation, the task force has undertaken a situation analysis. This involved discussions with relevant staff and analysis of relevant documents produced as national or sectoral initiatives. This initial exercise has been further extended to a learning process from other countries and programmes initiated and/or being supported by various
UN
agencies for similar exercises. Interview questionnaires have also been employed for gathering the necessary data. Seventy-two federal and regional institutions were visited and the data obtained has been analyzed.
The task force then identified the following basic components that have to be addressed for the development of a national information and communication infrastructure.
Information Contents (base),
Users,
Information Service Providers and Access to Information,
Hardware and Software,
Telecommunications Services,
Internet
Computer Networks,
Skilled Manpower,
Research and Development,
Organization and Management, and
Policies, Rules and Procedures.
The current status of the above components and associated problems were assessed and solutions were proposed. The findings are summarized below.(see Annex for detailes of Problems & Solutions Suggested.)
There is a steadily increasing gap between the demand and supply of relevant and up-to-date information. National information resources are not systematically organized in such a way that they are easily accessible with a view of resource sharing scheme. This has become a driving force towards a need for strategic development programme for information resource organization, management, and provision of services as an integral part of Federal and Regional administrative, economic and social development activities. It is a well-recognized fact that content development is the pivot to the advancement of information resource development and around which the capacity of effective data collection, information services and access to information be organized and developed. However, such systematic move to achieve the desired goal is lacking. Hence, information base targeted towards supporting development activities is required to be organized and managed by categorizing information into basic data, project profiles, library and documentation resources,
and regular activity reports. Primary data collection by an institution should be made on the basis of a set of criteria that will help to avoid duplication of efforts and the generation of data that mislead decision-making processes. Access to information could be facilitated on the principle of shared resources over regionally and sectorally distributed systems supported by the state-of-the-art technologies.
The acquisition of computer hardware and software does not follow a proper systems development study or computerization procedure. The study has revealed that most government organizations are equipped with the latest computers from which they are getting very little benefit. Before any major acquisition of computer equipment is made, a proper system study should have been conducted to identify the major purposes of the equipment, the application programmes that need to be developed to address the specific needs of the organization, and the skilled manpower and facilities required to maintain the system.
Data communication and the storage and retrieval of information in the form of databases using local languages, particularly those based on the Ge’ez script, are very difficult due to lack of standards in character setting, keyboard layout and terminology. It is suggested that the Government support efforts towards solving these standardization problems.
Besides its extremely low penetration level, the national telecommunications network is mainly designed for voice grade communication, which can not provide quality data communication services that can effectively support the envisaged National Information System (
NIS)
physical network. It is therefore, highly imperative to upgrade the capacity of the current national telecommunication network so that it supports higher data communication demands. There is also a need for a single physical network that can be shared by sectoral as well as regional organizations. The infrastructure of the national Internet service is the best option to be adopted to establish the network. However, the current development trend is very weak and shall not be adequate for the implementation of the
NIS
. It is therefore recommended that the Internet centre be organized as an autonomous body within the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (
ETC)
so as to managing its own administrative and financial systems. In addition, the involvement of other government institutions and the private sector to develop the Internet infrastructure must be encouraged.
It was also observed that there is a serious shortage of skilled manpower in the areas of information science, systems analysis, software engineering, networking, etc., both in number and diversity. While the demand for qualified manpower in the sector is high, only the
AAU
supplies a very limited number of graduates in computer science and information science. The contribution of the private training centres in improving the situation was also found to be unsatisfactory since the quality of their services is far below the required level.
Although the investment in the purchase of computer hardware is showing a considerable increase each year, manpower development efforts in this area are very discouraging. In most organizations, the hardware and commercial software that are acquired using the scarce foreign currency resources of the country are being used for basic activities such as word-processing by personnel with limited on-the-job training. It is obvious that the most expensive hardware and commercial software alone can not have any significant role in improving the effectiveness of operations in any sector without the availability of manpower with the appropriate skills. Therefore, the Government has to set short-term and long-term manpower development plans to alleviate the problem of skilled manpower in the area of Information Technology (
IT)
and related fields. In the short-term, the various institutions of higher education in the country need to be strengthened in order to produce more graduates in this area. In the long run, the subject of
IT
need to be introduced in the secondary school education. Moreover, since the problem is more serious in the regions, continued training strategies will have to be devised to upgrade the skills of personnel from regional administrations.
There have been very limited Research and Development
(R&D)
activities being undertaken in the field of
IT
and these few efforts are simply academic exercises not geared towards solving practical problems. There is extremely low capability to exploit the state-of-the-art technologies, methodologies and procedures in order to adapt them to local needs. It is therefore suggested that
IT
centres of excellence be created and strengthened, and research directives and support schemes be formulated.
There is a fast trend towards the integration of information-related activities that are currently managed by library or information and documentation centres, archives, computer units, and statistical services. However, insufficient attention has been given to reorganize and restructure information-related units and their activities with the view of enhancing their effectiveness, which requires to develop appropriate job classifications and positions. Merging the various information-related units to operate as a single entity can enable it to be productive and this facilitates the provision and use of information resources. Hence, proper structural placement and management position will be a prime concern.
In order to achieve an equitable and acceptable standard of development in national information and communication infrastructure, implementable national and institutional policies, rules and guidelines have to be formulated in the areas of acquisition of
IT
equipment, manpower development, and content development. This measure would enable to identify appropriate activities that require funding, develop code of conduct for the
IT
business, encourage local initiatives and knowledge transfer, and identify incentives required to attract relevant investment opportunities in the field. A very limited effort has been put so far to develop and implement appropriate policies, rules, and regulations that would enable the development of the information sector in a coordinated and manageable way. Therefore, a national information policy and strategy has to be formulated to address some of the key issues including
Information property and confidentiality rights of individuals,
Protection of intellectual property rights on software products and other IT related products,
The right to exchange and to be provided with information,
Human resources development, including the utilization of Ethiopian professionals living abroad and the utilization of foreign consultants,
The role of the private sector,
Maintenance and disposal of archival material,
Finance, both local and foreign sources, and
International cooperation in the sector.
In order to coordinate and guide activities in the sector and to avoid inequitable level of information systems development, duplication of efforts, mismanagement and underutilization of information resources, the establishment of a National Council Under the Office of the Prime Minister would be mandatory.
Finally, This exercise has indicated that developing a National Information and Communication Infrastructure (
NICI
) targeted towards establishing a National Information System is a key element that plays a major role to speed up the national socio-economic development endeavors. To this effect, strategic development of the components of
NICI
need be given proper attention by integrating it into the national and sectoral development plans and programmes. The task force firmly believes that the establishment of the National Council is a pre-requisite for implementing the recommendations and appropriate exploitation of the information technology revolution.
Problems & Recommendations
The findings of this study show that a number of actions should be taken by the Government and other concerned bodies to establish the
NIS
that can solve most of the problems that the country faces in the production, dissemination and use of national information that is of vital importance to the development efforts that are underway.
It has been found that a National Information Council should be established under the Office of the Prime Minister to guide the above actions. Furthermore, the study has recommended hereafter a number of actions that the Government should undertake for each of the major components of the
NIS
.
Information Contents
As regards to information content, the following major problems are observed.
Absence of systematic organization and management of information with active updating mechanisms which satisfies the needs of various categories of users,
Inadequacy of statistical data collected by CSA to address the demand of Regions, where one of the causes is its limited level of data disaggregation,
A very weak capacity and experience to repackage information to generate qualitative value-added information products and services,
Low level of penetration of ICTs in information management and service provision,
Inadequate management support towards the exploitation of the potentials and opportunities made available by the ICTs ,
Insufficient attention, particularly at regional level, to the development and exploitation of resources through ICTs ,
Lack of rules and regulations enabling archival document disposal and/or preservation as acceptable for legal filing.
Lack of application of state-of-the-art information technologies for storage and service provision in archives,
Overlap of interest and activities among government institutions in collecting, analyzing, and maintaining national data,
Acquisition of foreign origin information resources did not consider unnecessary duplication of resources and efforts as well as resource sharing requirements both at federal and regional levels,
Lack of national standard for classifying woredas as urban or rural. Currently different sectors may classify the same locality as urban or rural which creates data inconsistency, and
Lack of national standards for adapting the same Region, Zone, and Woreda codes for organizing databases. For example, CSA and MOE use different codes and it will be difficult to make analysis based on population and educational data.
1.
Practical short and long-term programmes have to be formulated by Regional Governments and the Federal Government as needed, as an integral part of their development programmes. Such efforts should be supported by Federal institutions, donor agencies, and others interested in capacity building in the area of information.
2.
Organization and management of information resources in all sectors and/or institutions should be made under the following categories.
a)
Basic data
institutional establishment facts such as programme activities and targets, annual budget by source of fund, and personnel details,
natural and material resources, etc
b)
Project profiles and management (detailed information),
c)
Library and documentation (bibliographies of in-house collection and referral resources), and
d)
Regular activity reports (on capital and recurrent budget implementation).
3.
It is recommended that each category be further studied in detail and guidelines be produced which will allow to collect, analyze, compile and generate output and disseminate or make them electronically accessible to users. Establishing task forces for each category through official assignment or other arrangements should be considered. Institutions like
MEDaC, ESTC, CSA, MOF
, and
MTI
have to play leading roles in coordinating and/or organizing information resources as per the above classification.
4.
Establish sectorally and regionally distributed information management systems targeted towards content development. This approach should ensure information security and accountability, maximize data ownership, encourage proximal capacity building in the areas of manpower, equipment, and decision-making, make data/information management more easier, and facilitate resource sharing schemes.
5.
An institution should be involved in primary data collection only if the following criteria are met. The institution
is mandated by constitution/proclamation/law,
is familiar with the area of the data to be collected,
has the capacity to deal with the level of data sensitivity (interpretation/analysis),
is familiar with and has the capacity to exercise appropriate methodologies in data collection, analysis, compilation and dissemination at the required depth and breadth,
has the resource capacity to perform and sustain the data collection.
6.
A given government organization should take the responsibility of producing and distributing urban/rural classifications for all woredas of the country. This should be adopted as the only official classification that all institutions and sectors must follow.
7. National codes (for Regions, Zones, and Woredas) should be developed and used in all sectoral and regional databases so as to enable the smooth exchange of information among Regions and Sectors of the country.
Users of Information
As regards to information users, the following major problems are observed.
Analysis of users’ information requirements and level of satisfaction with the services they are being offered is not being considered as a major element in creating and maintaining information systems and services.
Continuous and tailored promotional and user training is very limited and overlooked, since sensitization and training of users is vital to effectively exploit information resources.
Information seeking behavior of the society in general (excluding academic and R&D institutions) tend to be informal, instead of searching for formal and organized information resources. This is partly because it is assumed that informal information source is relatively up-to-date, inexpensive, easily accessible, and accountable.
Most institutional users lack experience of demanding for an integrated information. They do not have proper updating procedures for the dynamic part of the data. This has resulted in sending repeated or slightly modified inquiries as a result of which satisfactory responses may not be obtained.
Suggested Solution
1.
Analyze users’ needs (through user needs assessment) and effectiveness of information systems and services in harnessing users to make sound decisions and capable of solving problems.
2.
Effective promotional activities such as announcements, posters, exhibitions, orientations and the like and tailored user training programmes ought to be organized to create awareness of available and newly introduced resources by users.
3.
Both service provider and user institutions should identify repeatedly inquired relevant information and design systematic organization and updating procedures for such information.
Information Service Providers and Access to Information
As regards to information service provision, the following major problems are observed.
There is lack of understanding by many institutions of the concept that information resources are national assets to be sharable and accessed by all interested users, by setting facilitatory access mechanisms which embrace protection or preservation of the resources.
The existing information service provision requires users to physically visit and browse the resources available in an institution and is not supported by electronic access, document supply, microfiching techniques, etc.
Regional Bureaus lack the capacity of organizing and providing the necessary information services with respect to their Sectors and Regions.
There is no clearly articulated mechanism of integrating information service provision on the basis of regionally and sectorally distributed systems and with defined accountability and data ownership.
Absence of clear criteria and defined level of decision-making for classified information (information categorized as confidential) which indicates that there is national and/or institutional risk in terms of economy, social, political or individual privacy.
Suggested Solution
1.
In order to make the national resources available at national, regional and global levels, electronic format is an effective means to be adopted and strengthened in the forms of network accessible databases and
WWW
documents (particularly for basic data).
2.
A standard for setting prices of information products must be established, and charging be determined depending on the user type, purpose of utilization, nature and form of the information product, timeliness of data contained in it, etc. Those information products determined to be available on charge should be accessible to the user in their bibliographic form containing an abstract and price of the material that would lead the user to seek for acquiring or accessing the full text document in the available form.
The following are some of the major problems that have contributed to the underutilization.
Poor maintenance and after-sales services.
IT projects management problem
Limited focus on requirement study.
No Local hardware and software solutions.
Hardware and Software incompatibility problem.
Lack of capacity to properly classify computer hardware/software by Customs Authority.
Lack of national statistical data on hardware and software.
Suggested Solution
1.
Users have to be sensitized as to the importance of software. They have to know that bare hardware is nearly useless. They have to be encouraged to allow local professionals to develop application packages.
2.
Every possible effort has to be put to promote the possibility of providing local solutions for local problems. For example, local private companies can be encouraged, through tax exemption and other means, to at least assemble computers and to design and manufacture smaller hardware components.
3.
The acquisition of IT
products has to be supported by prior requirements study that indicates things like the manpower required to maintain the system, the specific problems that the solution will address, and the software that have to be developed or acquired to address the identified problems. The implementation of these prerequisites has to be indicated in the organization’s periodic activity plans.
4.
To alleviate the problems of hardware maintenance, the necessary grounds have to be laid for institutions of higher education to produce skilled personnel, and government institutions have to build their capacity in this area. Most importantly, a mechanism should be devised to promote the current poor services provided by private IT
solution providers.
5.
IT
projects have to be carried out either by well-organized in-house teams or by well-established contractors under serious supervisions of consultancy bodies.
6.
Customs staff have to be given the appropriate training periodically that can enable them to properly classify all imported hardware and software.
7.
The CSA
has to include data on national hardware/software inventory, IT
manpower and the like in its annual publications.
8. A national committee should be established immediately in order to study the year 2000 problem in Ethiopian organizations and propose generic solutions.
The main problem is
the poor state of the telecommunications facilities
Suggested Solution
1.
The Government must ensure that the current projects of the ETC
in data communication are executed to their terms by closely following-up and evaluating them regularly.
2.
The introduction of new data communication technologies must be encouraged and supported so that the telecommunications sector keeps itself abreast of the technology.
3.
The quality of the local loop and the last mile (from the exchanges to the premises of the customer) connection must be improved to enable high bandwidth data communication services to businesses by supporting modernization of the telecommunications infrastructure.
4. The data links with the Regions, including remote areas of the country, must be improved in order to enable the introduction of modern applications of telecommunications such as teleconferencing, telemedicine and distance learning.
Suggested Solution
1.
The EIC
must be organized as an autonomous body with efficient administrative and financial structure.
2. The participation of the private sector in retailing the services of the EIC as well as establishing other ISPs should be encouraged in order to speed up the national Internet network that will be used as a physical backbone of the NIS .
3. The Ethiopian Telecommunications Agency has to be mandated in controlling these retailers by preparing and enforcing rules and regulations on their responsibilities as regards to services and users.
Universities, colleges, and schools must be funded for Internet connections by subsidizing (or allocating budget) their Internet subscription and their networking infrastructure such as campus-wide and university-wide networks.
Computer Networks
Several reasons may be given for this very poor state of development of
LANs in the country.
Some of the most important ones are the following.
High degree of conservatism (resistance to change) among decision-makers.
Scarcity of skilled manpower.
Unplanned development of computer systems.
Financial restrictions.
Suggested Solution
1. The establishment of organizational, sectoral and national WANs has to be encouraged. In order to help organizations in this endeavor, the National Council should be mandated to provide the necessary expertise and to facilitate their coordination.
2. Government organizations must be obliged to:
regularly assess their equipment, with the help of professionals assigned by the Government when necessary, and replace their old equipment with new ones if this is found to be economically and operationally a better option.
perform proper system study by qualified personnel (possibly consultants) before the acquisition of a LAN or a WAN .
have a plan of budget and personnel for the adequate maintenance and administration of their LANs and WANs .
3. The publication of professional journals, the organization of seminars, expositions, etc. in the field of networking must be encouraged in order to raise the awareness of the general public.
Skilled Manpower
The major problems that need national consideration regarding skilled manpower requirements in the context of establishing a NIS are
The number of professionals who are engaged in activities related to IT is extremely low.
The number of graduates from institutions of higher education in areas related to IT is very limited
Lack of appropriate positions in the organizational set-up of institutions.
Some of the reasons for this problem are the following.
Inadequate attention is given to activities related to IT .
Lack of adequate knowledge to specify the appropriate positions required.