Seychelles launched national ICT policy

Seychelles is the latest COMESA member country to launch its national ICT policy this week. The development came just over a year after the first meeting of the local consultative committee charged with providing policy direction to the government on ICT growth in the country.

The document sets national ICT policy objectives in five key areas, notably in ICT Infrastructure, legal and regulatory framework, human resources development, as well as industry and government.

“Through this policy document, the government recognizes that accessible, affordable, high quality and well-regulated ICT facilities and services with and within Seychelles is critical to the realisation of its vision of a modern, ICT enabled and knowledge-based information society,” says the minister responsible for ICT, Jacquelin Dugasse.

The policy drew together the experiences of countries such as Singapore, Malta, Kenya, Mauritius, Botswana and others which have over the last few years undertaken a similar exercise.

In reply to criticism raised about the transparency of the exercise, minister Dugasse said the policy was approved by the government on September 8th this year, only after extensive consultations and discussions involving a wide range of participants from the public sector as well as civil society was made.

“This policy is truly a public–private partnership at the highest level. In ensuring wider participation in the development of the policy, its draft was also distributed to other stakeholders such as the Liaison Unit for Non-Governmental Organisations (LUNGOS), the Seychelles Lawyers Association and others.”

The policy among other things takes into account the objectives of the Seychelles Government with regard to Strategy 2017 and the 10 targets of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS).

“This will be achieved with the commitment to monitor the implementation of the policy, through the use of appropriate indicators and review when necessary,” says the principal Secreaty for ICT Benjamin Choppy.

The policy came to being with the financial and technical support of the Commonwealth, COMESA and the India Ocean Commission. Meanwhile, the consultative committee has been mandated with the formulation of a comprehensive national ICT strategic plan for 2007.

MCB warns clients against scam

The Mauritius Commercial Bank (Seychelles) has issued a security alert to all its customers about an Internet scam aimed at stealing its clients’ identity.

In an advertisement in the national daily, Seychelles Nation, MCB says, email messages alleging to come from the bank are inviting Internet Banking (IB) customers to log in their account via a link.

This in effect could lead to clients’ accounts being re-activated remotely.

The bank says the messages are part of a scam known as “phishing” aimed at stealing the IB customers’ user ID and pass word,

MCB has assured its clients that it provides adequate security measures, such as cryptographic standards to protect their financial information and transactions as they are being transmitted over the Internet.

Meanwhile, the bank is taking this situation very seriously. It has published on its website a list of precautionary measures all clients must take to further enhance security and protect themselves from unauthorised access to their personal financial information.

The measures include; protection of password, logging out correctly, clearing history and setting daily transfer limit.

Seychelles Weekly “named and shamed” Intelvision

The Le Nouveau Seychelles Weekly newspaper claimed many people have called their office to complain about the services offered by Intelvision.

The paper in its 28th September publication wrote, “the criticisms were more pronounced in respect of its Internet services, which are more offline than online, although other areas of its services were also singled out for criticism.”

Intelvision, which commenced operation in October 2004, is one of the three local ISPs alongside Atlas and Kokonet, but also provides telephone and cable TV services.

Like its competitors, Intelvision entirely relies on satellite technology for connectivity. In the past all ISPs have experienced slow connectivity because of alleged bandwidth problems.

However, Seychelles Weekly pointed out that “Intelvision has substantially less subscribers to its Internet services and should not by any stretch of the imagination, be experiencing such problems.”

The paper said the complaints are not only limited to the Internet services, but also about the customer as well, which they say “is more or less non existent”

“The problems are so bad,” wrote the Seychelles Weekly “that even tourists who visited our islands and have experienced their services first hand, have surprisingly gone out of their way to post their complaints on the Internet.”

The company which this week is celebrating its 3rd anniversary with massive discount offers, states on its website that:

we are devoted to listening to and understanding the individual needs of our Customers. We will strive to be your provider of choice by fostering an environment of teamwork, innovation, quality and efficiency to achieve a common goal of TOTAL Customer Satisfaction.

So far there’s been no public reaction from Intelvision regarding the Seychelles Weekly’s article.

Editor’s Note: I noted that all the customers’ quotes from the Seychelles Weekly’s article are originally from the Seychelles Digital blog, but no mention are made of it by the paper.