Demystifying the Budget and your role as an ICT professional.

When the budget was read a few weeks ago, I was keen to find out what the picture looks like for ICT professionals. Fortunately and like many Ugandans, I have a range of activities that form the basis of what I call work. This means that I can on the whole, benefit from most of the sectors that are covered under the budget. This is really one of the advantages of having work or skills as an ICT professional. Most of what you can can fall fairly across all the major sectors in the country and it's development. 

We have for example:

1. Agriculture 

2. Lands and Housing

3. Energy and Mineral Development

4. Information and Communication Technology. 

5. Tourism, Trade and Industry.

6. Education.

7. Health.

8. Water, Sanitation and Environment.

9. Social Development.

10. Security.

11. Justice, Law and Order.

12. Public Sector Management.

13. Accountability.

14. Legislative.

15. Public Administration. 

The landscape as it stands and the new hires. 

This article was due weeks ago but a few recent developments have helped strengthen and add to its content. After some consultations with a few key players in the market I made the suggestion that groups like the ICT Association need to meet with the new ministers and perhaps even present them with an agenda and a portfolio with a list of Interests and positions. We are glad to report that at least NITA (a group that is assigned the task of handling our infrastructural projects) took the time to meet the new leaders. This is interesting because if you look deeper into the budgets there are sections that are in long and medium terms that fall under very specific groups whose task it will be to implement and develop certain aspects of the plan. This also explains some of the budgetary constraints especially because most of the work that organizations such as these will be involved in will mainly be in training and certification. The results of which will only be featured much later and whose fruits will be seen in years to come as professionals emerge and the basket of contributions increases. 

A) The Snapshot

This splits expenditure into two broad categories the first is recurrent while the second is developmental. Under recurrent, we have wage and non wage expenditure while under developmental we have government funded and external funded expenditure. A quick look at the dailies especially the job sections will give you a good idea where the bulk of foreign money comes from and what it funds. Mostly this goes into roads and infrastructure as well as general health concerns. U.S funded projects are often coordinated through Non Governmental Organizations that have strict rules which the beneficiaries are supposed to work with. USAID or DFID for the United States and the United Kingdom respectively are examples. Of projects are funded by government, these will often be challenged through the ministries that run those sectors. Given the complex nature of some of the ministries and the often overlapping roles that these have, one has navigate the various policy documents to find which area has two most relevance. For example Health related projects and disability are run by both the ministry of health and the ministry of Gender labor and social development. 

B) The Sector and the National Development Plan

The role of the sector in development is defined around the subject of Social-Economic Transformation. 

Strategies and Interventions for this transformation are split in two groups. The first has to do with services (access to affordable, good quality, infrastructure as well as policy) while the second broad category has to do with resources...the Human Resource. They are stated below: 

1. Enhanced access to quality, affordable, and equitable ICT services country wide.

2. Investment in infrastructure and services for improved access to quality ICT services.

3. Building competent human resource capacity in the sector

4. Develop and implement a policy, legal and regulatory framework for systematic services country wide.

C) Medium Term Sector Policies 

The sector objectives which guide medium term outputs and resource allocations are:

1. To increase geographical coverage and tele-density of telecommunications services with a high quality of service;

2. To have in place a balanced and coordinated national and regional communications infrastructure;

3. To promote equitable access to affordable and innovative communication services with specific emphasis on rural areas;

4. To establish and enforce a regulatory framework that promotes the development of the sector;

5. To provide affordable and accessible postal services countrywide;

6. To provide high quality broadcasting infrastructure countrywide;

7. To promote use of information technologies in all spheres of life to enhance efficiency and effectiveness;

8. To provide high quality market-driven and sustainable training, research and consultancy services that support the ICT sector. 

The objectives are stated above and as can be seen cover board range of areas and responsibility carriers. For example certain parts of regulation might be covered by the Uganda Communications Commission or a Communications Regulatory Authority (should the need arise for the creations of a separate group). Additional tasks might be split and catered for under the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the Higher Education Board or the Council For Higher Education, or council for Science and Technology to name but a few. Others call for the rise of new relationships with Telcom companies as well as closer collaborations between different players. Recent developments have brought about agreements between competitors where sharing of masts for example now takes place something that was never before dreamed of. 

It is important we believe to have a clear split between the need for new certification groups on one hand and the role of professional associations as a means of providing a useful filter in creating the professionals we need in the market place. 

D) Summary of Sector Performance

The status of the sector in terms of its three priority sector outcomes is set out below:

1: Improved service delivery through ICTs

Most of the growth in this area will be determined by the service providers and the agreements they sign with government. Whether that is in phone services, Internet and data, cloud services and other medium to large scale data storage solutions. The subscription numbers are attractive but can only be seen as potential revenue for the providers. 

2: Improved access and utilisation of quality and affordable ICT resources and services in all spheres of life.

The most impressive figures are those relating to mobile money services that represent a merger between traditional telephony and banking. The figures are in upwards of trillions which is an a substantial amount. As can be expected, there are talks with the central bank to find a method of regulating and legalizing the services of these telcos. 

3: Improved contribution of ICT to employment, income and growth.

1.3 million and 2% the first is the number of people employed in the sector as per 2014 December, the second is the contribution to the GDP of the Country. 

The sector is full of promise especially after much of the work is done in policy and certification most of which fall under the NITA docket. This is the same group that helped create partnership with India and its massive Business Process Outsourcing  (BPO) projects.