Staff at LINK Academic Staff Luci Abrahams, Director Charley Lewis, Senior Lecturer Abi Jagun, Senior Lecturer Visiting Academic Staff Lishan Adem, Visiting Associate Professor Chris Armstrong, Visiting Researcher Andrew Barendse, Visiting Adjunct Professor Mark Burke, Visiting Researcher Richard Collins, Visiting Professor Simon White, Visiting Adjunct Professor Support Staff Darshana Bhana , Project Co-ordinator LINK Associates Titi Akinsanmi Ewan Sutherland Kelly Wong About LINK Vision & Mission Goals Introduction Information Society in South Africa Organisational Background Needs in the Sector Implementation: courses, projects & partnership International Links, Partnerships & Networks Budget, Financial Planning and Sustainability Annual Report

Vision

The LINK Centre is the leading information and knowledge hub providing training, research and consultancy in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) arena in order to develop public, private, NGO and community-based capacity within the Southern African region.

Mission

The LINK Centre is the leading public policy, regulation and management educational body in the area of information and communication in Southern Africa.

This body focuses on capacity building in the public and private sectors and development arenas through quality training, applied research and consultancy services necessary to maximise the benefits of the Information Society and economy.

Goals

The LINK Centre works to achieve its Mission and Vision through:

The LINK Centre is a response to the growing demand for training and research in the information and communication sectors as South Africa and other African countries attempt to position themselves effectively in the global economy while addressing the challenges of social and economic underdevelopment.

The information revolution offers opportunities for the developing world to leapfrog stages of development and to embark on new directions towards meeting social needs and enhancing country competitiveness. Information and knowledge will form the basis of the economy and society at the start of this millennium. If South Africa is to participate effectively and exploit the potential of this new economy for its own development, it will need to ensure it has the necessary resources, which are primarily financial and human capital. Developing skilled people, increasing the pool of young academics and researchers in this field of study, increasing the numbers of managers, policy designers and knowledge workers able to create an enabling ICT environment for society and the economy, is crucial to the transformation of South Africa.

The Centre offers high level management, policy and development skills through a combination of training and applied research activities. The Centre aims to produce world class professionals who are able to exercise vision, leadership and executive management capability in the introduction and application of ICT in public institutions (both governmental and non-governmental).

Information Society in South Africa

South Africa is in a unique situation: it is both a developing country in Africa with massive basic needs which are largely unmet; and it is a country with a major industrialised sector with great technological potential.

South Africa's re-entry into the global marketplace and the need to address major infrastructural and social backlogs requires great investment in creating knowledge and building the country's human potentia - particularly in the field of information and communications strategy and management - essential components of success within the Information Economy.

Human resources and skills are central to the ability of any country to develop in the globalised, competitive world of the new century. Maximising the benefits of the Information Society requires information literacy at all levels of society. The key mechanisms for growth in this knowledge and skills base include access, training and relevant content. The Centre is extensively involved in supporting development information and community information and communication initiatives, specifically through the Universal Service Agency and Multi-Purpose Community Centre projects. It has also actively participated in a number of Sectoral Educational Training Authorities, established in terms of the Skills Development Act, in the ICT arena and supported various policy formulation processes in broadcasting, telecommunications and currently in state IT policy and e-commerce.

Organisational Background to the LINK Centre

The Graduate School of Public and Development Management

The Graduate School of Public and Development Management (P&DM), together with Wits Business School, constitutes the post-graduate component of the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at Wits University. P&DM was established in 1991 to address the challenges of management capacity building in the government and development sector.

P&DM enjoys a high reputation, and is widely regarded as the leading school of governance in the country and region. It offers a wide range of post-graduate degree and diploma courses, certificate programmes and numerous executive courses. P&DM has made significant contributions in public sector research and has carried out a great variety of research programmes for clients in the government and development sector.

The Director of the LINK Centre is accountable to the Director of P&DM and serves on the Management Committee of P&DM.

The LINK Centre and Needs in the Sector

Skills Gap - Education and Training

Currently, the key need of South Africa in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector is human resource capacity: skilled people to take advantage of the opportunities for economic growth and community development. This lack of managerial, technical, research and policy skills will have a serious impact on South Africa. This will limit the growth potential of the sector, harming South Africa’s international competitiveness, and will also mean that the benefits of ICTs will have less impact on community development.

The Centre addresses this skills gap at different levels:

• Introductory level: Information literacy courses
  Aimed at people who have never used a computer before, particularly community activists. These short courses (8 sessions) are heavily subsidised and teach computer literacy and provide an understanding of the social, technical and policy issues.

• Career development: Certificate courses
  Various courses, usually three weeks (120) hours over three months in duration, aim to explore in depth particular knowledge and skills relevant to our sector. These include information management for the public sector, NGOs and CBOs; policy development and implementation, regulation and management in the ICT sector including telecommunications, broadcasting and IT; convergence and globalisation; IT and telecommunication management for economic empowerment; e-communication and e-commerce; and public and development communication.

• Academic Degree: Masters
  A stream on the P&DM Masters of Management allows specialisation in ICT management. In future years this will be developed into a separate Masters course. This will provide high-level managerial and technical people to add ICT capacity to the state and development sector.

• High-level impact courses: Executive courses
  Shorter intense courses, around three days, aimed at exposing professionals to new concepts, innovations and skills. These include courses such as those on intellectual property rights; e-commerce and interconnection.

These various courses operate as building blocks and entry points into higher level programmes in line with the National Qualifications Framework.

Understanding Gap – Research and consultancy

Most of the understanding of the information age comes from developed countries in North America, Europe and East Asia. There is little in-depth knowledge on the specific issues of relevance to Africa, and South Africa in particular. There are major areas of the impact of ICTs that have not been studied at all in the South African context, leaving Government in a weak position to form policy and implement plans.

The Centre has developed its own innovative and flexible research programme aimed at issues such as appropriate regulatory frameworks for the South African market; methods of attaining universal access to ICTs; governmental use and abuse of ICTs; intellectual property rights issues for content and software development; electronic commerce and convergence. LINK is currently involved in research in many of these areas including modelling for telecentres throughout Africa; strategies and definitions of universal service provision; gender and development through ICTs and regulatory modelling; and examining the requirements of an effective national information infrastructure.

Being independent, the Centre is allowed to form its own research questions so that it can help to lead the debate on these issues in South Africa. Through close links with government departments, business and community organisations we are able to stay close to the real needs of the country.

The rapid pace of Information Society development is such that a great need exists for applied research. The Centre carries out commissioned research, but is also in a position to develop its own research questions and run its own research projects. To this end the Centre has established a research network of associates who link other research and development agencies, individuals, government departments and industry players with the aim of furthering the debate in South Africa on the impact of these technologies. Through our dissemination and teaching, the outputs of this research has a wider effect.

Most of the research capacity is based on virtual teams, with co-ordination done by The Centre and most of the work done by our network of associates. The associates are experts in a particular field of ICTs, mostly based in South Africa but a few are based abroad.

Isolation - Networking and Information Dissemination

The Centre carries out information dissemination through publishing a Public Policy Research Series which is available in print and on its web site. It has published for three successive years The Southern African Journal of Information and Communications, with contributors from the African continent. Through full-time and part-time staff it has participated in, or continues to work with, a wide range of ICT organisations and committees, such as:

• e-Strategy Task Team
• Minister of Communications Advisory Group
• National Digital Advisory Board
• IT Industrial Strategy Group
• IT Foresight
• Acacia Advisory Board
• SchoolNet SA
• National IT Forum
• Telecomms for Africa Development Consortium
• National Community Media Forum
• Computer Society of SA
• Media Monitoring Project
• Freedom of Expression Institute
• Black IT Forum
• IT Association
• Research Network in Social use of ICTs
• Gender and ICT network
• African Telecommunications Forum
• Computer Society of South Africa

The Centre's journal - The South African Journal of Information and Communication - services this sector within the formal academic terrain, to share ideas, debate and encourage rigorous and critical research. The journal has a prestigious editorial board consisting of Luci Abrahams (SA), Sandra Braman (US), Polly Gaster (Mozambique), Richard Joseph (Australia), Emmanual Ole Kambanei (Tanzania), Tim Kelly (ITU), Robin Mansell (UK), Jonathan Miller (SA).

All these elements clearly link to each other: research develops new ideas and content to feed into teaching; students bring ideas that lead to research projects; our networking attracts students; research shows the need for new course content; former students call on our assistance through consulting which renders teaching more relevant to real issues.

Implementation: courses, projects & partnerships

1. Courses

Masters Degree

P&DM has for several years successfully offered a Masters of Management degree in Public and Development Management, aimed at the public (government) and development sectors. The duration of the degree is one year full-time and two years part-time. The Centre offers a specialised ICT stream on this degree to produce competent managers with an understanding of, and skills in, managing the technology and policy implications of the information age. The ICT electives include:

• Information and Knowledge Management
• ICT for Development
• E-Governance
• Globalisation and the Information Society

The intended outcome of this degree is to produce the following set of skills:

• Technical competence in ICTs to support managers in the public and development sectors;
• Business planning and strategic management of ICTs;
• Business restructuring and institutional re-design;
• Strategic planning and management;
• Project planning and project management;
• Procurement and contracts management;
• Financial planning, budgeting and management;
• Policy formulation, implementation and management;
• Knowledge of IT applications in the public and community sectors;
• Knowledge of the applications flowing from convergence in technology;
• Management of the legal and regulatory environment in the converging broadcasting, telecommunication and IT sectors;
• ICTs in development facilitation and management;
• Understanding of the global shifts in the Information Economy;
• Issues of community access to the Information Society.

The Centre is multi-disciplinary, with a broad knowledge base in the economic, political, technical, legal, management and social science disciplines. The Centre shares courses and lecturers with other Wits Faculties, such as Electrical Engineering, Management Information Systems, Legal Department, the Business School and the School of Humanities.

There are a very wide range of sectors that need formal education to enhance policy, regulatory and management capacity to deal with the new challenges and opportunities of the information age. For these The Centre runs certificate courses, lasting typically three weeks, normally spread over three months.

Existing certificate courses include:

• Information and Knowledge Management for the Public Sector (IKMPS);
• Telecommunications Policy, Regulation and Management (TPRM);
• E-Government (e-GOV)

The Centre offers a number of short executive programmes aimed at high-level professionals. The aim is to expose these participants to new developments in the sector or specific skills. These courses will be very dependent on the current issues, and sometimes will be built around a visiting expert in a particular field.

Each executive course is unique and is developed based on demand for a particular client and audience (unlike certificates which are usually repeated). These can be developed and organised at relatively short notice.

The Centre is available for advice, education and training services or commissioned research to organisations in the field. The Centre has conducted work for, inter alia, the Universal Service Agency, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), the Telecommunications Regulatory Association of Southern Africa (TRASA), the Centre for Public Service Innovation and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund.

South African Networks

The Centre is currently engaged in a collaborative academic programme, the NetTel@Africa programme, with the Universities of Fort Hare and the Western Cape and UNISA, as well as other universities in Africa and the US, to offer post-graduate level programmes, including a Masters programme in ICT policy and regulation. It is envisaged that the programmes will commence in 2004.

International Links, Parnerships and Networks

Some of the organisations we have established links with are:

• Cotelco, University of Michigan School of Information (US)
• Technical University, Delft (Holland)
• Science Policy Research Unit, Sussex University (UK)
• SADC / SATCC
• Informatics Centre, Eduardo Mondlane University (Mozambique)
• Faculty of Engineering and Science (Aalborg, Denmark)
• International Development Research Centre (Canadian NGO)
• International Telecommunications Union (UN Body, Geneva)
• Telia Academy (Sweden)

The Research ICT Africa! network formed in 2003 includes:

• LINK Centre
• National University of Rwanda
• University of Nairobi (Kenya)
• Makerere University (Uganda)
• Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia)
• University of Ghana
• University of Botswana
• University of Zambia

The Centre is a self-funded entity, relying predominantly on self-generated funds from training, consulting, commissioned research and public interest research. It secured a three-year grant beginning in 1999 from cellular network operator, Vodacom, to support its establishment and a further three-year grant to support the establishment of a Visiting Professorship for human resource development through research and training.

As part of Wits University, as established by Act of Parliament, all donations are tax-deductible, and donors will be issued with an 18A certificate.

The Centre produces an annual report, and other reports as required by funders. Annual reports are presented at the Advisory Board meetings, which are held on an annual basis. The Director of the Centre is responsible for the successful running of the Centre.