Question 1

New ICT Helps Build Smart Zambia.

Scott is a senior staff member at the Zambian Ministry of Finance (MoF). As part of his job, he analyzes a wide range of economic data, including statistics on power generation, copper production and exports, the use of mobile communication services, and numbers of tourists. Scott's information is sourced from government departments across Zambia. Scott has often faced delays in receiving critical data. There has been a history of disagreements between departments over the specific data to be released, or when, or sometimes difficulties when needing to access old data stores. Challenges on the systems level have included the inability to deliver a reliable supply of electricity to the IT systems, which at times has caused the loss of important information. Scott relies on his colleague Ben, an IT engineer for the MoF, to resolve all such technical issues as they arise. Among Scott's concerns is maintaining effective voice and mail communications between the Zambian ministries of finance, agriculture, transport, and customs. As the national data infrastructure of Zambia has become more digitalized, the need to store and analyze large amounts of data has grown exponentially. However, because the IT resources of the Zambian government have been operated separately, the risk of data loss remained high. Scott, Ben, and their peers throughout the government have been unable to keep pace with the rapid change in the requirements for enterprise ICT leasing, Page 4 of 4 and each of the problems described above were having an equal effect across other major agencies, including agriculture, transport, customs, and tourism. To ensure the development of secure, efficient and interoperable systems between departments the Zambian government set out plans to build and promote a "Smart Zambia." The government determined that progress into the digital age would involve the use of innovative technology to advance a national informatization program for egovernment, e-commerce, and IT talent.

A. The Zambian government insists on using the waterfall method to build interoperable systems between departments, but you are of the idea that they use agile development instead. Explain three (3) practical reasons why agile development is a more feasible system development process. [15 Marks]

B. Suggest an appropriate strategy the Zambian government will use to cut over once the systems are fully developed. [10 Marks]

C. Once systems are fully operational, describe three (3) steps that need to be followed through in order to ensure maintenance of the systems. [15 Marks]

D. Going forward, the government will need to prioritize which systems will be worked on first. Describe the pareto principle and its application in building a Smart Zambia. [10 Marks]