Rejigged laptop program faces same old hurdles
What you need to know:
- This time, there was relatively little public interest in the announcement that the project is on track.
- The nature of the device dictates in turn the appropriate manufacturers, distributors and eventually the local university assembly lines that are supposed to take over the production process in subsequent years.
Last Friday, the Cabinet Secretary for ICT, Dr Fred Matian’gi, called a press conference where he briefed the nation about the progress made so far on the elusive journey towards providing laptops to Standard One pupils.
This time, there was relatively little public interest in the announcement that the project is on track and the Standard One pupil will be able to smile with their laptops in 2016.
The general public seems to be resigned to the fact that the laptop promise was made in the fever of an election campaign and was bound to be contained and subsequently extinguished by the realities of governing.
But the Jubilee administration has soldiered on, despite the procurement challenges that keep bogging down the project.
A few months ago, the President, determined to deliver on the promise, moved the project from the Ministry of Education and placed it under the leadership of the Ministry of ICT. Does the Ministry of ICT stand a better chance of delivering on the project?
Though time will tell, there seems to be a fresh approach to the whole project in terms of publicity, coordination & partnership. The ministry has a dedicated website, dubbed DigiSchool, that contains all you need to know about the project.
The information shared includes progress report for those wishing to know what is happening so far. The implementation approach is available for those who want to understand the different pillars of the project, while the description of the equipment and services required is available for interested suppliers.
Clearly, there is renewed energy and coordination of processes and stakeholders to ensure that the project is delivered before the next general election. However, contentious points still exist around procurement.
Sh17billion every year for the project is quite a chunk of money in any currency and it is bound to attract and bring out the worst from interested parties who believe they have the capacity to influence the bidding process.
The battle begins with the specifications of the equipment and services to be procured; do we need desktops, laptops or tablets? Whereas the minister cleverly avoided the debate by saying that we shall procure ‘digital devices’ for the pupils, the laptop vs tablet debate is unlikely to disappear, the well-crafted, technology-neutral terminologies notwithstanding.
The nature of the device dictates in turn the appropriate manufacturers, distributors and eventually the local university assembly lines that are supposed to take over the production process in subsequent years.
The device question therefore has commercial implications of global proportions because international manufactures and their local heavyweights are likely to square it out.
The way they chose to resolve this question will determine whether or not our lawyers will be back and kept busy in courts – at the taxpayers’ expense.
The next likely battle front will be software and content related.
Will the digital devices have provision for proprietary, open-source or both types of software? The choice made at this point has different implications for purchase costs, maintenance and after-sales support.
Open–source proponents always argue that since their purchase price is zero, they offer the best opportunity for catalysing a truly open, affordable and creative software industry for the youth.
Their proprietary opponents counter that they offer the best after-sales value chain, which is indispensible for any corporate solution with a national scale. It will be interesting to see which way, the software question will be resolved.
Another battle front is likely to be between the traditional 'analogue' publishers and their new, digital rivals. Traditional publishers have been used to producing physical textbooks and will need serious business process re-engineering to engage with the new digital learning content paradigm. It is not a simple case of making ‘PDF’ versions of the textbooks, as most people would want to assume.
The digital content developers and publishers have an advantage because they are familiar with the new value chain and may prefer to cut off the old publishers from the digital content gravy train.
One can easily imagine the tension between analogue publishers, digital publishers and the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, KICD, which is legally mandated to provide oversight.
In summary, the Laptop project has been revived as the Digital Literacy Program, but only time will tell if the traditional battle lines have now been resolved.
Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya's Faculty of Computing and IT. Twitter:@jwalu email: [email protected]
