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Cape Town - South African technology policy points the country in the right direction, but there is a lack of effective implementation, says an expert.
"There’s a lot of talk about that [technology policy] certainly and there's also a number of projects that are geared toward that. It's just slow in happening," Kobus van Wyk, head of e-Learning at Mustek told Fin24.
Van Wyk was responsible for the Khanya Project which was tasked with equipping schools in the Western Cape with computer technologies.
In the decade that the project ran, he spent a budget of R1bn and trained 27 000 teachers to use technology in the classroom.
But it wasn't a walk in the park. There a number of challenges in building technology solutions in the public service.
Institutional challenges
Van Wyk said that there were institutional challenges that contributed to the slow acceptance of technology among officials.
"The short answer is 'yes' but a person has to be careful not to insult government officials," he said of the lack of technological skills.
"We talk about a lack of capacity but I'm sure we're not talking about a lack of mental capacity."
The government has conceded that there are significant institutional challenges in pushing technology in schools.
In terms of the National Broadband Policy, SA Connect, Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services, Dr Siyabonga Cwele said that 8 491 schools had been connected with broadband in the past five years, though there are challenges.
"I am aware that not all these schools are utilising their facilities as effectively as we had hoped. The Department has started an audit of the schools we have connected to identify the challenges they face," Cwele said on Mandela Day in Nelspruit.
Internet technologies
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Van Wyk compared the push for technology in government departments to the acceptance of the Khanya Project.
"With teachers, they are educated people, and many teachers find it very difficult to adopt technology and to adapt to new learning and teaching styles.
"So a person can assume that that may be true of many government officials, many of whom do not have the same level of training and education as a teacher. For them, the road may even be longer to adapt to new ways of doing things," he said.
Technology has made its way into unusual industries and in the health sector, internet technologies hold the promise of allowing doctors to operate on patients in distant locations.
"In the health sector for instance, technology can play a huge role: Telemedicine is something that's used all over the world. For a nurse or a doctor now to adapt to a new way of working is not easy so time is necessary," Van Wyk said.
In the civil service, he argued that role players should be drivers of technology as this would encourage officials to adopt technological solutions.
"The senior officials need to adopt it first, but also the business sector needs to push and contribute. It's easy to criticise government, but the private sector can do a lot to support and help government."
Security
But there continues to be criticism that, for example, storage solutions can be compromised with the theft or digital manipulation of data.
In the US, hospital group Community Health Systems was hit with a massive breach where 4.5 million records were stolen.
But Van Wyk said that traditional records were no better at guaranteeing the fidelity of patient records.
"The same can be said for information that is stored on paper. It can be compromised, it can be burnt; it can be destroyed. It depends on how well you protect it.
"I believe that there are enough mechanisms in place to protect digital information - it depends on the measures you take."
Van Wyk is a technology evangelist and argued that beyond training government official to use technology, there was the potential to change the world.
"It's not just the training on how to use the technology, but how does it change the way in which you work. How does the world around you change?"
Check out this News24 Live video on how technology can impact on education in SA:
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