[kictanet] Update on the ICT Practitioners Bill - Get the Facts Right

[Kamotho Njenga]

Fellow Listers,

The purported updates regarding the ICT Practioners Bill that have been
intermittently flying in this forum are fallacious and misleading. If
indeed the author of the updates was anointed to represent KICTANet on the
Multi stakeholder consultations on the Bill as claimed, then listers
obtained a raw deal. The self styled supplier of "updates" was not present
at the various stages of consultations including forums held at the
Communications Authority premises, stakeholder position's harmonization at
MOIC Teleposta, the stakeholders Retreat with the Energy Committee that
included representatives of the MOIC, Communications Authority, ICTAK,
KEPSA, KITOs among others. As much as there is zeal to share "updates", the
good citizen is severely limited in terms of subsequent developments,
having participated very tangentially in the process of deliberating on the
Bill.

Contrary to the antagonistic impression painted through and through, the
stakeholders were able to reason together and by the time the Retreat with
the Parliamentary Committee on Energy and ICT concluded, consensus had
largely been reached on all the issues. The deliberations largely succeeded
because parties adopted an open minded approach and applied themselves to
intellectual focus to justify their positions on the Bill. On point was the
Cabinet Secretary for ICT, Joe Mucheru who was able to justify his
reservations against the Bill, not by displaying "power and might" but
through a meticulously reasoned and deeply analytical presentation.

Hard-line positions were melted down not by online braggadocio but by
cogent arguments wrapped in sound logic. People persuaded others and got
persuaded by others. Deliberations proceeded in good faith. Needless to
state, this Bill like any other is not a matter of life and death.
Parliament would be within its mandate to pass the Bill intact, to amend it
or to reject it altogether. All the same, I have full confidence that the
Energy and ICT Committee will sift the issues as requested jointly by
stakeholders and make drastic recommendations on the Bill to eliminate any
possibility of negative disruption to the Kenyan ICT growth trajectory.

 Thus, personal obsession should not form a basis for castigating the views
or initiatives of others regardless of how unsound one perceives them to be
from their own perspective. Listers must also be wary of people who will
never approve anything as long as it has not passed through their own
hands. As long as we are in a constitutional democracy, individual citizens
wield a right to lawfully pursue any agenda of choice. Nothing for instance
would prevent anyone from forwarding a "Nyama Choma Practitioners Bill" to
Parliament for Consideration.

My humble understanding is that KICTANet is a serious platform where
listers are at liberty to exchange ideas that are supportive of ICT
sectoral progress. To this end wisdom should flow unfettered. This imposes
a responsibility to ensure that information supplied is factual, evidence
based and not merely driven by a passion for online flamboyance. In the
alternative, this forum could easily degenerate to mediocrity of
proportions only comparable to that of third rate blogs. God forbid!

Kamotho
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