Question

Debate has emerged and raged on regarding many African countries including Ghana not making rapid economic progress in an emerging knowledge economy. Poverty exists in spite of development being driven by technology, fuelled by information and powered by knowledge, and, many are oblivious to the reality that information and communication technology (ICT) cuts across all aspects of our lives.
We take a queue from the ICT driven economic experiences of the United States during the dot com boom and developments in Finland and other Western economies. We are informed by issues of globalization, the knowledge economy and the transformation of business processes using ICT in India, China, Korea and Malaysia. Close to us in Africa we are encouraged by economic growth using ICT in Rwanda and South Africa.
Pundits have argued that illiteracy is to be blamed, and mathematics and science education needs to be prioritized. Others say it is in our attitude fashioned by our past which does not relate development as an independent variable relative to other variables such as technology. While some view our challenges as lack of leadership to implement sustainable ICT policies and strategies at a macro and micro level, many argue that development of a nation’s economy has much to do with input from ICT personnel. They do not only belong to the domain of personnel with tacit knowledge of engineers who should provide infrastructure but such need to study policies that determine development
a.
i. As a person in charge of IT in a government department in Ghana, what indicators will you use to convince your colleagues that there was a need to take steps to usher this country quickly into a knowledge economy?
ii. What software option will you recommend to your ministry? Open source or Microsoft as proprietary software? Provide reasons for your recommendation.
iii. List FIVE (5) ways of how the TPS can be of use to a government department.
b.
i. What challenges are government organizations likely to face in deploying ICT to change their operations?
ii. Which communication medium would you recommend for a government department, a cable, wireless or something else? Justify your recommendation

Answer 1

Answer A)

step1##

i)

The indication of need to usher  country quickly into a knowledge economy is that

There are still many organizations and people who dont have knowledge about technologies like ICT and other new technologies. They are still having issues with implementation and use of such technologies. Manu organisations are avoiding the the use of these technologies which is a problem for globalization all these are due to the lack of knowledge economy. People lack knowledge about these. Hence we need to usher  country quickly into a knowledge economy.

step2 ##

ii) I will recommend open source software. There are many reasons for choosing the opensource software. Some of them are

reasons:

Free:

• As this is open source, it is free to everyone. Anyone can use it without anu payed liscence.
• We donot need to pay for it, we can download the code,we can see the code and evaluate it.
• As it is free we can try it before implementing it on the whole organisation.

Free Support available.

• As this is free , there is community of people and developers who are using this and are available to ask questions and advice

Few bugs

• As this is used by global community, there are millions of people who are examining the code, hence there is higher probability of finding bugs and fixing it.

Security.

• In open source software, as the code is visible to us, we can check or test the code for security by our own. We can make sure that it is safe or not by our own and donot need to blindly trust the vendors for security without seeing the code like proprietory.

Answer b)

step##

i) Chellenges of government organizations likely to face in deploying ICT to change their operations

Lack of knowledge

Many government organisations do not have good knowledge of the ICT which lead to exploitation of the benifits of the ICT. Sometimes they lack experience with ICT and less capacity. It requires good knowledge to use the ICT efficiently.

Require change.

The current working process of Structures and staffs of government departments ahve strong momentum. ICT have a simple approaches and is easy to use but changing the processes of current departments is difficult. It is difficult to conceive new ways of working.

More costly.

It need proper Planning and financing for using the ICT efficiently. It need cycling funding and regular management costs. Hence it becomes pressure for administratives to fund on a regular basis.

Sustainibility and scaling

• ICT in needs a new level of collaboration, internally and externally with other organizations.
• It need a new approach to scaling solutions to achieve a really material impact .
• This requires neccessary significant coordination between government departments, technology companies, private sector organizations, universities, and central government entities and local government entities, and also with traditional development partners.

step2)

ii) Communication mediums suggested to an government organisation aret wireless mediums.

because:

• Portability: You can communicate on this even while moving, it provides you portability that is ease of moving. You do not need to stay in the same location while using this.
• planning is easy: As this do not have wires it is easy to implement it. We donot need to worry about the cables or wired which are complicated to implement.
• Low cost: It do not have wires which reduces the cost of implementation as well as the cable cost.
• Long Distances Communications: These can be used to communicate across a wide range. It is not limited to specific area or system.