A sustainable ICT strategy for the government of Lesotho

Working closely with the government of an entire nation to completely revitalise their approach to, and spending in, ICT

Problem

Improvements in ICT were a key feature of the government of Lesotho’s annual National Development Plan setting out key areas of government in the coming year. Within the report, the Ministry stressed the need to understand the government’s ICT landscape up to that point, including underpinning technologies, applications, skill sets and support resources. Ultimately, it needed a comprehensive ICT strategy to enable the appropriate budgeting of ICT as well as the adoption of best practice ICT management – a document which we were trusted to provide.

Solution

Our high-level, independent ICT review began by investigating the current state of affairs across a representative sample of government departments. This process included carefully recording the details of the existing systems in use, researching the issues faced by the user community with respect to the current system, as well as identifying factors that were suppressing the effective use of ICT across government.

In addition, we undertook a high-level audit of email systems, applications and infrastructure, including data centres, WAN, PC and server estate and the telephony infrastructure, as well as assessing the ability to exchange data between ministries and deliver e-government services. From this, we were able to provide high-level, strategic recommendations for a deliverable and sustainable ICT strategy for the government of Lesotho.

Outcome

The strategy that we provided included the following elements:

• a revised ICT structure
• a proposal for a new central entity solely responsible for organising government ICT
• anticipated staffing requirements to deliver our strategy
• an estimated budget
• an implementation plan/roadmap.