[kictanet] Lets stick to the ICT Policy Agenda

[John Walubengo]

A member whose address is disguised since the mail was private has challenged me on why I seem to be protecting 'thieves'.

I sought to clear the air by saying that if you reviewed my first paragraph, you will realise that I did NOT deny that we have corrupt operators in our ICT industry (after all we are officially ranked by Transparency International amongst top 5 corrupt nations in Africa/World?). 

And neither am i protecting anyone for that matter. My thinking was simply that KICTAnet may miss its objective by attempting to un-ravel scandals that we are paying other people to un-ravel. In other words I dont think it should be our core business as a community and we may not be as effective on scandals as when we focus on ICT Policy and its implementation.

Finally, I did not block discussion on corruption in ICT per se, but just thought care must be taken to avoid a full-blown, mud-slinging, self-defeating, electronic mob-justice episodes that results in collateral damage (i.e. the disintegration of an ICT Platform for exchanging useful ideas). I simply put some conditions for discussing such sensitive issuess by saying that they should be based on conclusive evidence and should add value in terms suggesting what governance/policy interventions can be put in place to avoid recurrence.

This is the best practice and you can benchmark with the BBC blogging rules
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/4176520.stm

walu.

--- On Thu, 7/3/08, <xyz at xxx.com> wrote:

> From: <xyz at xxx.com> 
> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Lets stick to the ICT Policy Agenda
> To: jwalu at yahoo.com
> Date: Thursday, July 3, 2008, 12:16 PM
> Why do you protect thieves 
> Sent from my xxxx