Information Policy

Kenya Investing Ksh16.3 Billion in Rural ICT

With the eminent arrival of Seacom and Teams broadband infrastructure to Kenya, it's Minister for Finance, Uhuru Kenyatta, proposed three major investments in ICT to benefit university students, public servants and ordinary wananchi.

Minister Kenyatta announced commitments of over Ksh 16.3 billion to the Mobile Computer Laboratories, Digital Villages, and One Million Computers programs in his 2009-2010 Budget speech, as a way for Kenyans to take advantage of the cheaper broadband Internet.

Mobile Computer Labs (new)

Minister Kenyatta allocated Ksh1.3 billion ($16.6 million) to purchase Mobile Computer Laboratories - computer-filled buses - for each Parliamentary region of the country. These ICT buses will be for high-school students and follow Rwanda's ICT Bus initiative, where that country is poised to roll out mobile telecenters for rural communities under its eRwanda program.

Digital Villages (existing)

Similar to a small cybercafe, Kenya's Digital Villages are small ICT centers in each Parliamentary region that are designed to create business hubs and expand economic opportunities in rural areas. This project, in partnership with the World Bank, is already underway and has rolled out 16 centers so far.

One Million Computers (new)

Minister Kenyatta allocated Ksh 15 billion ($195 million) to the One Million Computer program, which like its name suggests, will try to disseminate a million laptops and desktops to university students and other Kenyans. This is both the most interesting and exciting program for ICT companies in Kenya.

Designed as a financing project, the government will guarantee money borrowed either by individuals or organizations to buy computers before next June, with the government paying the interest on the loans. The program s expected to work with broadband providers, who would also be interested in discounting computer prices to bring in new Internet service accounts.

This scheme is reminiscent of freebee marketing, where companies steeply discount or give away one product that creates an ongoing income stream for another. Its also an opportunity to gain up to 1 million new customers for computer companies, even if they are not ISPs.

Massive Market Opportunity

With a current computer penetration at less than 3% of the population, all these new computer users in Kenya will be looking for local training, content, and web-based services - a whole new market for local ICT vendors, software developers, and writers. Better yet, most of these new ICT consumers will be outside Nairobi, expanding the usage and market opportunity across the country. And just in time. As Information PS, Dr. Bitange Ndemo says

"The country now has a number of high speed connectivity and it would be a crime if we don’t utilise this because of lack of computers."

Not utilizing this investment as a massive market opportunity would be an equal crime as well.

http://www.ictworks.org/news/2009/07/29/kenyan-government-investing-ksh163-billion-rural-ict

Deloitte Study Suggests Social Media Policy a Must Have

By Bruce Johnston

Without a social media policy and strategy the risk is 100% that your brand reputation will be damaged

According to Deloitte’s recently released 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey, 74 percent of those surveyed believe it is easy to damage a brand’s reputation via sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Why wasn’t the result 100%?

Without a social media policy and strategy the risk is 100% that your brand reputation will be damaged. United Airlines got it wrong and this is what happened – “United Breaks Guitars,” which was the headline making public relations nightmare of the week last week. For those of you keeping score, it is estimated this episode, viewed by over 4 million thus far, cost United a 10% drop in their stock price, equivalent to $180 million or 51,000 Taylor guitars!

Goldman Sachs stumbled and this is what happened – http://budurl.com/xbbv. Crocs got it right when called on the carpet by Scott McKain in a tweet of a Washington Post article. This is what happened – www.crocs/blog.com.

Employers and employees alike are seeing instances like these and are beginning to understand the real impact of social media on their brand. The results of the study could have very well stated 74% of those surveyed don’t understand social media and the power of social media.

http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1052701

Online Degree Programmes in Uganda

Faced with insufficient infrastructure and the ever-growing student population, Makerere University is to start online and tele-education degree facilities to ease congestion. The move comes after the varsity's Faculty of Computing and Information Technology (ICT) and the University of Hertfordshire School of Computer Science entered into a partnership to introduce online and tele-education degree programmes at Makerere. The Dean Faculty of ICT, Prof. Venansius Baryamureeba, said the programmes will help to reduce on the number of students who trek long distances to get lectures at the university and also reduce the burden of accommodation fees.

Courses earmarked include: BSc in Computer Science, BSc in Information systems, MSc Computer Science, MSc in Distributed Data Management, MSc in Distributed Systems and Networks, MSc in e-Learning Technology, MSc in Mobile Computing. Others are MSc in e-Learning Technology, MSc in Human Computer Interaction, MSc Multimedia Technology and MSc in Software Engineering.

http://www.digitallearning.in/news/news-details.asp?Title=Online-Degree-Programmes-in-Uganda&newsid=16652

Social-media skills become crucial for job hunters

The landscape of today's job market is shifting, and the shift favors individuals who are savvy in social media. 'If you're in advertising, marketing or communications, the more information you can put out to people where they want to see it, the better,' said Bob Van Rossum, president of MarketPro, a marketing recruitment company. 'If you're in one of those fields, it's now required for you to be pretty savvy in the social media area, even if it's not your primary focus.' Atlanta job postings on a number of Web sites include Twitter and Facebook requirements for applicants. A senior account executive position at Softscribe Inc. requires '5 years Tech PR Agency Record + Twitter.' Mosaic Sales Solutions describes the 'key characteristics' of its ideal Atlanta market training specialist as 'an avid user of the Internet, blogs, Twitter and/or has a facebook page or other social networking account.' Brett Stevens, president of SearchLogix recruiter company said social media skills are particularly important for jobs in tech business, sales, public relations and media. That's because social media networks provide cost-effective ways for companies to put out their message and provide information to people in a personal, one-on-one way, Van Rossum said. In non-marketing or PR jobs, Stevens said, social media skills are not as critical, but they can indicate to employers how technologically savvy an applicant is. Over time, he said, social media skills will become important to everyone - not just those in marketing and communications.

http://www.ejc.net/media_news/social_media_skills_become_crucial_for_job_hunters/

Microsoft brings Live@edu to Moodle

Microsoft is bringing its widely adopted Live@edu collaboration suite to Moodle, the open source learning management system (LMS) that's installed at more than 35,000 registered, validated sites worldwide. Microsoft also unveiled today its new Education Labs site, which will serve as a repository for education software developed on an accelerated cycle. Through a new plugin developed by Microsoft and released today, Moodle users will be able to take direct advantage of Live@edu features, including calendaring, search, e-mail, shared workspaces, storage, and instant messaging.

Live@edu is Microsoft's free portal, communications, and collaboration suite for education. The cross-platform service provides a range of hosted solutions for education institutions, including mail (with 10 GB per user), Windows Live SkyDrive storage (25 GB), and Office Live Workspace collaboration and document sharing, among others. According to Microsoft, it's now in use by more than 9 million students worldwide. With more than 24 million users participating in more than 2.2 million courses, Moodle is generally recognized as the most popular learning management system on the market, open source or otherwise. It supports both small and large deployments (with several sites well beyond 100,000 users) and includes course management tools, various Web 2.0 technologies, online assessments, and other features common to learning management systems.

http://www.digitallearning.in/news/news-details.asp?Title=Microsoft-brings-Live@edu-to-Moodle&newsid=16653