eSTRATEGIES LIVE, CAPE TOWN

I think that this event should be conceived as a pilgrimage, a yearly, annual
event where we all come and gather, take stock of where we were last year, where
we are now, what are the new innovations and changes in the marketplace, and how
we can position ourselves in this particular regard. I think the keyword is
flexibility and continuous learning and improvement as the sector changes.

Paris Mashile, Regulator, ICASA

I think you must have seen the excitement in the room. You know, I was remarking
that I am very glad to have met the type of participants you managed to bring
here. They cut across the whole of Africa. You have Ministers like myself, going
down from South Africa to West Africa. And there are regulators and operators .
. . most excellent.

Hon. Mr Benjamin Ntim, Minister of Communications, Ghana

It was a very important meeting because we were there with private providers and some of us in the government and public sector.  I have always said that the private sector, the public sector, the civil society, we must work together in these issues.
The format was very good. Each private sector, the UN agency, the public sector and those of us in politics were able to input before generating a discussion.  And that was very good.  I made some very good contacts. I’ve discussed with the Philips people, I’ve discussed with Siemens people. I told them frankly where we think we are going wrong.  I hope that will be able to assist them to adjust. I think they appreciate our difficulties and I think that’s good for them to learn that these are difficulties we face as a developing country. I think I’m a converted person as far as eHealth is concerned.

Hon. Mr James Gesami, Deputy Minister, Health and Sanitation, Kenya

I think it was a very useful event.  The fact that you brought together a wide, broad spectrum of people representing the public sector, government, the private sector, business, industry and a research person made it really broad-based and the discussions were therefore rich.  I think it was a useful event.
The topics were really useful.  Talking about health systems per se with regards to eHealth, talking about infrastructure, talking about financing, talking about policy, all those things made for very rich discussions.  When we talk about eHealth usually people will think about the health sector on its own, but the discussions went beyond the health sector. Especially interesting with people in industry, those who make software or hardware and those who deal with communication technology and information sharing, the fact that all these people brought different facets of the discussions together made it quite interesting.
The forum definitely will help drive the agenda for Africa. I was even more impressed by the fact that there was a Deputy Minister of Health there, because policy makers need to know what happens in the technical field.

Dr Stella Anyangwe, WHO representative for South Africa

I have met people with varied experiences here – international organisations and
government officials with varied experiences. I believe there are those areas
that we have already seen as beneficial to us, especially in the areas of the
management of the gateway. We really don’t have enough information about it and
especially on how we are able to use it. I think we have that now.

Hon. Mr Dhado Godhana, Deputy Minister of Communications, Kenya

I thought that the whole idea of discussing eStrategies is very timely because this is an opportunity to look at various aspects of IT, to address those issues that relate to the ordinary people and this was the very important beginning to an important forum to discuss these issues with a good number of people that we have not discussed in the past.

Hon. Ben Kargbo - Minister of Communications, Sierra Leone

I think the British Publishers roundtable is a kind of a forum where policy makers and everybody else involved in a particular area have a place to be able to sit down together, talk about issues, and come up with a reasonable solution.  I feel that we now have a starting point for future eStrategies events, where we can have more in depth discussions and come up with an outcome that will eventually influence how policy or how business is being done or carried out in Africa or developing countries.
The panels have been quite representative of who should be there; think we have a very good right mix of representation on the panel tables because we are talking about public/private partnership and there has been a good forum to bring all these key actors together to be able to sit down together and talk.

Adesina Iluyemi, eHealth Consultant, SINSEPRUD LLP, UK, co-chairman for Global Health, NEPAD, and PhD Candidate University of Portsmouth
 
Personally I think I gained a lot in terms of knowing who the suppliers are and the experts in this area. Normally, I mean, we get to interact with suppliers through their country representatives and you never get to know really what systems they have and what are the possibilities for expanding on those systems we buy, and also how you have that face to face contact in case you need to develop the system further or you need to discuss with them and say ‘look, this is what I’m thinking; how can you help’, especially in service provision.

Segakweng Tsiane, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, Botswana

Many ideas were circling in the room, good ideas that we will follow up on with.  Also what came to the fore is that listening to other governments, Namibia, Lesotho and Botswana, that our challenges are very much the same.  We share the same type of identification, immigration challenges, and it will be quite useful, if that flows from this type of forum today, is that we would continue that type of interaction with our neighbouring countries, with our service providers, with our vendors as well.

Yusuf Simons, Chief Director, Ministry of Home Affairs, South Africa

What they have shared with us I always remember when we embark on new projects, the procurement of things, I will remember and try and bear that in mind.

Sharon Thomas, CIO, Department of Justice, South Africa

The forum has been extremely useful.  You are getting players who are in the same field coming from different angles.  It is important that we put these together for the benefit of the citizens that we all serve.
From the point of view of government, what we recognised is that we cannot do without technology, that it is costly and that therefore we should look for formulae for working together to ensure that this technology can be deployed towards the advancement of our objectives. It’s very important, this kind of meeting is important.  I think industry has to understand that while they have a responsibility to their own shareholders, the greater responsibility surely must be to the client.
I’ve made one or two contacts with people who I believe may be involved in the tenders that we have issued.  That’s going to be extremely important to take some matters up with them.

Mavuso Msimang, Director General, Ministry of Home Affairs, South Africa

I think it’s a great idea to bring all the different stakeholders to one table and to discuss different topics and to exchange the different desires, needs and experiences. So, I think it was a great opportunity to exchange the ideas, to network and also to get the audience involved in this discussion.
I think it’s absolutely needed. If you want to establish eHealth into Africa, African countries, you need politicians, you need the government, you need people behind in order to drive it and support it.
We have to find and identify the needs of the different stakeholders.  So, it’s a good opportunity to see what is needed from our prospects, from our customer, from our partners, in order to identify where we have to move and where we have to customise business models. But I think it’s crucial that we come to a conclusion and that we develop business cases which provide value to each party.
I think it’s absolutely necessary to have a follow-up session and, I mean, now we got to know each other, we know better what the needs are, but in order to come to an action plan, I guess it’s important to have follow-up discussions about it.

Christian Klaas, Regional Business Director for Siemens AG in EMEA

I think it was interesting for me personally.  Having been to such a forum for the first time, what I have learned here is that certainly what’s right for Europe is not automatically right for Africa. In Africa the situation really is completely different. I think it’s definitely important to have these kind of discussions on a public and private level. Also I have learned that maybe the vendors should listen more to the people, to the customer, to the end customer and listen to what they really want, rather than what the vendor wants to sell.

Hertor Bauer, Head of Marketing and Sales, Trueb

It was a very useful discussion between the operators and the suppliers, the people in government and the regulators, and unusually, because it was a forum of that size, it was just right to get a higher quality of debate- anything bigger than that it tends to be a bit more formal, so I thought it was excellent.

Mark Williams, World Bank Task Manager

I think this is a very good format; a very closed meeting because sometimes when it’s too big you can’t really get anything to get done in any way.But it was the right kind of people who were in there.

Dr Moretlo Molefi, IsfteH Board Member and eHealth Consultant, MRC

I think we should do more and more of these kind of interactions to get senior government officials in a relaxed mode, no secretary, no phone calls. It's magic. They are focused, very sociable and they listen better if they are in this kind of environment.There's so much value. I think the investment that we put into this forum is definitely worthwhile.

Benny Serepong, Public Sector Executive, HP

I liked the way you guys did the panel, where you had both industry and the ministerial view on the panel, because often we talk about things as industry and we make assumptions that that's what they need, and it isn't.

Diane Lindemann, Public Sector, SAS

For me it was rare. It was very informative and I was actually surprised to see there was quite a number of academics as well as research institutions here. And we actually like to try and involve them and this should be part of that, to try and get their input especially on the innovation side. This type of open discussion forum is a very good way of sharing the best practices, lessons learned and to share the knowledge of how we, and also to get the same vision of how eGovernment should be implemented.

Sonette Meerman, eGov Architect, SITA

The forum was very useful. Having this contact is very, very beneficial to understand the core challenges of these various representatives. It is beneficial not only for me personally but also for my colleagues working in the field of Africa and in the various countries. It’s very, very beneficial to make these contacts now and intensify these contacts in a follow-up situation now.

Frank Zimmermann, Practice Principal - Public Sector HP Consulting and Integration EMEA, HP

The forum was very useful. I have always felt that there needs to be some forum that can possibly get the African states together. This was reiterated by one or two of the delegates in the conference who said that this is the first time they managed to actually get a broader overview of where the market is going on ID and eStrategies.

Rodger Meterlerkamp, MD, Oberthur Technologies

The very open and frank discussions were very focused and really significant value. What was good about the panel forum was that Ministers and Permanent Secretaries and Director Generals who are the decision makers within those Ministries, were really open. Sitting next to those decision makers and interacting with them on a personal level was also very valuable, since you don’t often get the opportunity. I think we need more forums, and think that government has taken notice of that within these sessions. Certainly, the feedback to me was that this was valuable for them as well. Within this forum, we've had people approaching us and telling us about problems and highlighting their interest in what we have said, and there will certainly be follow-up from Unisys.

Gerald Naidoo, Unisys

The forum was extremely useful. I learned a lot and I think the networking that we did here will be very valuable in the future. Hearing from the Ministers themselves and the people on the ground, you actually learn what is the things that are giving them the most grief. And then as a vendor we can try to solve their pain points for them there. There’s definitely a need for more of these kind of discussions between public and private sector. We’ve made very good contacts here.

Johan Kotze, Novell

I thought the forum was excellent. It was a great opportunity to meet a number of people who play different roles within the industry. I was impressed with the calibre of the panellists. I think you guys did an excellent job of bringing together a wide variety of people with deep experience across a number of sectors within the healthcare industry, so you get a number of perspectives for the audience. It was great to hear the wide variety of opinions. The event was excellent from a networking perspective. You get to meet people from all different segments within the industry on an informal basis rather than being in a more formal setting where you have to do a PowerPoint. It’s nice to be able to just have an opportunity to build a relationship with somebody that you have a common cause that you are really both trying to work towards without necessarily being in a sales environment or an environment governed by rules of how you interact with one another, particularly in the government setting. It was great to be able to meet and interact with government officials in an informal environment.

Richard Berner, Vice President and General Manager, Cerner

We got some really good representation from the SADC countries, from the governments particularly. It was extremely useful to have the Permanent Secretaries. They were telling us exactly what was going on and where the specific problems were. I’ve already made some meetings with Botswana and Namibia and hopefully we can take those forward and from our point of view get some business, but also help them as well.

Tom Walden-Jones, Sales Manager, De La Rue

The reason I came to this event is that I see a lot of nice projects in Africa, in South Africa, in Kenya and Nigeria, bringing healthcare to the rural areas. We need to develop solutions and find a market model we can roll out throughout the whole continent; we need to work together and this event gives us that opportunity.
It was vital for me to hear what the public sector is expecting from industry and I hope that I can now take a clear business case home to give to my management and say ‘look, this is why we need to invest. This is the commitment we have made to the world and this is how we as an industry can make business from it'.

Arthur Van Dongen, Business line manager, health care informatics, Philips

From a company perspective I found this event very useful indeed. I was able to get a clear understanding about what the public sector is thinking about it in the market place, what new initiatives are being developed and what problems they have. Most importantly, I was able to suggest ways in which iSoft will be able to solve those problems.
I also got an idea of how the private sector can play a proactive role in improving the access to healthcare. At iSoft we are very, very conscious of the need for the private sector to play a role in bringing quality healthcare to the people.  So from that perspective as well this was a very enlightening event as we were able to see different stakeholders participating at a very senior level.

Mr Prabhukumar KA, Operations and Solutions Director, iSoft

Thank you very much for everything regarding the eID event this week. The feedback has been very positive. 

Lauren Castelyn, Novell

It was really an excellent event where I learnt a lot of things.

Bertrand Germe, HP

I found it really useful to get in touch both with the system integrators who do the projects.  We as a technology provider block only (unclear) the system integrators normally, and with the public sector and to see what their requirements are, what their view on the different technologies is.

Arnd Langguth, VP Sales EMEA, Cross Match Technologies

The forum definitely has been useful.  We have exchanged a lot of ideas between the private sector and the government sector around one table.  And that’s proven to me that there may not be much a gap between the two sides of the equation.  The public sector has key areas of concern – capacity building, how to deal with vendors. At the same time the vendors have the same issues with procurement as well as how to deal with government in the context of in-government projects which is basically government wide and sometimes nationwide infrastructure and modernisation projects.
So we shared the common views and concerns and I think we came up with practical recommendations of how to break this gap between the two parts of the equation – the private sector and the government sector.
This is one of the first few trips I have been down in Africa and the level of interaction we had with several of the key decision makers definitely will lead to more collaboration.  As we know, the sales cycle in Africa normally takes time but I personally managed to build a good relationship and contacts between myself and the services that I provide as well as the key decision makers in these countries.

Ayman Adhair, President and CEO, Global Integrated Management Consulting

eSTRATEGIES LIVE, NAMIBIA

I must thank British Publishers from the beginning for initiating these
roundtable discussions. We need more of this, you came at a very important time.

Hon Stefanus Mogotsi - Dept Minister, Ministry of Home Affairs & Immigration, Republic of Namibia

It was very useful. It is a good opportunity to share experience on all the
projects that we have implemented and to explain the difficulties we encountered
and to share this experience with any country which is ready to implement a new
electronic document. So it was a very important meeting for us…so it’s a very
good experience.

Morgan Violeau - Area Manager, Arjowiggins

eSTRATEGIES LIVE, JOHANNESBURG

Many thanks for organizing the roundtable in JNB. It was a good opportunity
where GET got closer to its customers and partners. I personally enjoyed the
worthy discussions took a place for two days being on the roundtable with all
those valuable speakers and audience.

Reda Baalbaki, GET Group

eSTRATEGIES LIVE, BAHRAIN

The eStrategies for eGovernment in the Middle East roundtable presented for the
very first time in the region an opportunity for concerned experts in the public
and private sectors to share experiences and knowledge along enabling
eGovernment themes. It facilitated a structured peer-to-peer exchange of views
and opinions on eGovernment strategizing and planning that will undoubtedly be
of value not only to the programs of the roundtable participants and their
organizations but also to all other regional programs and actors. In knowledge
management terms, I view this roundtable as a main step towards forming a
regional eGovernment Strategies community-of-practice.

Raymond Khoury, Director, Booz Allen Hamilton

It was a pleasure meeting with you in Bahrain. I found the roundtable discussion
interesting and informative. The mix of people from private and public sectors
made it even more so. I look forward to reading your publication on this
roundtable discussion in the near future.

Fadi Salem, Research Associate | Dubai School of Government

eSTRATEGES LIVE, PRAGUE

I think that there is lack of such events offering opportunity for forward looking discussion on high level like the eStrategies event. It would be appreciated to continue them in the future preferably on annual basis.

Europe is in competition with other business locations of the world. The Prague event pointed out maybe different positions in detail - but one goal in general: How to bring the best public service to businesses and citizens and so to strengthen the business location Europe.

Josef Makolm, Head of IT-Audit, Directorate General V - Information Technology, Federal Ministry of Finance Austria

eSTRATEGIES LIVE, THE HAGUE

The roundtable is a fantastic networking opportunity. Everything was both
well-organised and conducive to making new contacts and meeting others in the
field - the discussion was lively and fruitful.
The roundtable provided us with a comprehensive insight into the market as well
as a broad spectrum of new international trends. We especially liked the wide
range of discussion delegates - and the many interesting talks that ensued. The
interlocutors were keen to talk to us about real opportunities and we expect
this to turn into business for us. We had a great time in The Hague and
thoroughly enjoyed the roundtable. We look forward to hearing from you in the
near future."

Armin Hopp, CEO digital publishing AG, Munich, Germany

I would like to thanks you for the invitation in which I think it was an
outstanding session.

Dr. Mukhtar Al-Hashimi, the Dean of the School of Information technology,
Presidential Advisor on Academic Affairs and an Associate Professor at the
University College of Bahrain

eSTRATEGIES LIVE, DUBAI

It was a pleasure to meet you and attend the roundtable meeting here in
Dubai. As I have stated this in front of the camera, the organisation was
excellent, and the CONTROL of discussion in the meeting from you was amazing
as well! I was honoured to be a panel member, and I would like to thank
you once again for giving me and Emirates ID this opportunity. I wish you
all the success and happiness.

Ali M. Al-Khouri, Assistant Director General, Emirates Identity Authority

"It’s a good sounding board to find out what’s going on. And again, you’re
getting a mixture between end users, the decision makers, the vendors, the
suppliers in the industry. And I think, to brig them all together in a
collective audience as we have done today, that is an excellent way of actually
having that sort of debate and discussion to see what’s happening. It’s a good
sounding board to find out what’s going on. And again, you’re getting a mixture
between end users, the decision makers, the vendors, the suppliers in the
industry. And I think, to brig them all together in a collective audience as we
have done today, that is an excellent way of actually having that sort of debate
and discussion to see what’s happening."

Christopher Owens, Industry Consultant, EDS / Injazat Data Systems

eSTRATEGIES LIVE, FINLAND

Thanks so much, I really enjoyed the session - the insights from the clinicians
who participated were excellent.

Dorothy Whittick, Executive Consultant – Certified, IBM Global Business Services

Thank you for inviting me to very successful Round Table discussion in Helsinki
which was for me one of the most interesting events last year.

Peeter Ross, Director of Research and Development, PSF