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

[wamuma]

Following keenly these new developments of UPDATES and COUNTER UPDATES as a silent follower and player . Thanks 
Anthony Weru


Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.-------- Original message --------From: Kamotho Njenga via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> Date: 09/12/2016  11:49  (GMT+03:00) To: wamuma at gmail.com Cc: Kamotho Njenga <kamothonjenga at gmail.com> Subject: [kictanet] Update on the ICT Practitioners Bill - Get the Facts Right 
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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