June 25, 2012

  • More than business as usual

    More than business as usual

    Career

    I spend most of my day in a workshop. The final budget allocation prioritised seven major information and communication technology projects. My pet project is included in the list of seven so I am excited but also know that it will take a lot of hard work to achieve the goals we set ourselves. We have 9 months to deliver results and a big portion of the nine months is taken up by the procurement process and initial infrastructure implementation. The allocation of funds allow me the opportunity to make a tangible contribution to the institution. The whole division's leaders and managers sat together to coordinate milestones, resource requirements and interdependencies between the projects. It is for the first time that seven such critical projects will be in progress concurrently with allocated funds. I hope that we can maintain the momentum keep to a proud heritage of successful implementations in the past. This is an opportunity I worked towards for the previous year and now it seems I will be empowered to actually make a difference. The challenges are significant of which people resistance to change is probably one of the most important to address. However since I am busy now for such a long time, I am confident that we will be successful.

Comments (10)

  • Nothing like a nice challenge to keep you busy!  I've been doing a lot of information procurement and initial data analysis of late culminating in solution formulation and preliminary concept articulation.

  • I trust, my brother. That your analytical mind accompnied by your moments of deep silence and concentration, will carry you to a successful end in this new venture of yours.

  • Good for you. How is your PhD coming?

    Can you give us some samples of the sort of projects you are working on - I'm interested in the directions the SA govt. is taking.

  • It's nice when one gets the feeling that one's work will actually make a difference. I hope it all goes well. 

  • @Relic47 - Sounds like we are doing many similar things.

    @catstemplar2 - We always start off with the intent of a successful outcome.

    @tychecat - PhD is moving forward. I am not with the SA govt. but in the Parliament of SA. There is an independence between Parliament and Goverment...Parliament protects the democracy, institute legislation and ensures good governance by the Goverment through oversight. In the South African Parliament much emphasis is on ensuring Parliament effectively represents the will of the people through ensuring sufficient public participation. There are many projects and I am mostly involved with the Information and communication projects. We are for example working on a broadcast project which will make the work done by the members of parliament more visible. Video feeds will be created from various venues cataloged, stored and made available to the media or whomever might have an interest. This ensures that everything of the official parliamentary events are available for scrutiny by the public. We will do an audio upgrade the chamber of the main house of Parliament. Since you are talking of a chamber with seating for more than 400 people, the sound system is imperative to ensure all members can be heard when they make a contribution. With the chamber management system comes other components like a voting system and access control etc. Since Parliament is mainly a knowledge driven intitution we will be developing an mobile application that allows the Members of Parliament access to research, documentation and services on a portable platform. This project will increase the effectiveness of Members of Parliament to make more informed decisions.  The project I am most interested in is a Business intelligence project that will support our institutional performance management and allow us to improve the effectiveness of the administrative processes that supports the Members of Parliament. The solution will also be key to collect data to support the oversight function of Parliament and ensure good governance.  Hope that gives you an idea of the type of projects I will be busy with.

    @oceanstarr - Thank you, I am sure it will go well.

  • @Zeal4living - I understand your position with the SA Parliament - from my American viewpoint, the legislative branch is very much a central part of the nation's government even though it is not part of the day-to- day executive management of the national government.

    It sounds as if you are engaged in very important upgrades of the fundimental communications system of the parliament.BTW, is the Parliament multi-language, or is its business conducted solely in english?

  • Confidece of success is the great energy to put out there!

  • @tychecat - South Africa has 11 official languages and it is the objective to support all 11 official languages but most of the proceedings are done in English as the most common denominator. So the capacity must be there to translate any document from any official language to any of the other official languages.

  • Sounds like some tedious work! But that can be healthy to some degree to constantly challenging you and keep ya on your toes! I hope in spite of all that excessive busyness that ya still get a chance to blog in between and comment back here and there :) I always enjoy your post and or comments :)  

  • @VirginiaWolffe - True, thank you for teminding me

    @Ms_BeautyExpert - I will be around for a long time

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