Industry expects charter by year-end

Johannesburg, 12 Sep 2006

SA`s ICT charter group is hopeful that, if everything runs smoothly, the ICT charter will be gazetted by year-end.

Norman Munzhelele, chief director of policy in the Department of Communications and chairman of the charter steering committee, says if the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) receives Cabinet approval for gazetting of the Codes of Good Practice soon, Cabinet may give the go-ahead for the gazetting of the charter.

The DTI aims to send the codes to Cabinet this month, he says, based on his discussions with that department. Approval of the codes would pave the way for the charter to be gazetted as a Code of Good Practice, he says.

Minister of trade and industry Mandisi Mpahlwa said in July he was confident the process of finalising codes would be presented to Cabinet for approval in August 2006. After this, the first and second phase of the codes would be gazetted.

The charter has been finalised for some time and would, once the DTI`s codes are published, only require fine-tuning, he says. Munzhelele does not see any material changes needing to be made to the charter.

Phase three outstanding

Andile Tlhoaele, CEO of Inforcomm and a member of the ICT charter steering committee, speaking as a representative of the charter working group, says the completed charter was handed to the Department of Communications in April last year.

Following on from that, it was handed to Cabinet for approval in May and, in the same month, Cabinet gave the go-ahead for gazetting. However, in order for the charter to be gazetted as a code, DTI first had to finalise its work on the Codes of Good Practice.

So far, two phases of the codes have been released and only phase three is outstanding.

Tlhoaele adds that gazetting the charter as a code and not a simple charter would provide a level of legislative protection for ICT companies that receive contracts from governmental agencies. This is why it was felt the charter should be gazetted as a code, he says.

"Our charter will be one of the first to be gazetted as a Code of Good Practice."

The remaining steps are essentially administrative in nature and the charter is already in effect among industry members, he says.

"We basically ran ahead of the DTI."