On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 12:07 AM, <ashok+skunkworks@parliaments.info> wrote:

The very same citizens are voting for the politicians and governments you have issue with ... if you cannot improve the dialogue with your own elected officials then there is no chance anybody from the outside is going to want to listen.

@Ashok, I agree with you. We normally accuse politicans and govt officials of bad habits such as vested interests either directly or by proxy but this culture is so deeply rooted that it is taken as a norm. Yesterday I read on kictanet that Safaricom have developed an mHealth platform and was glad to that they are moving towards core systems. However, what struck me as very odd then was the link between Safaricom, Govt and Pivot25 winner AfriHealth Application.

My question started with how does a developer know what market trends are happening and plan according to that because you just cannot out of the blue decide what app to do? It seems none of the other Pivot25 developers knew of the mHealth initiatives by Govt, unless they had insider info. Safaricom has made matters worse by appointing people to its vetting mobile dev environment who themselves are either current commercial developers or have indirect interests in such. This was one of the worst decisions that Safaricom could have made because then it boils down to ethics. How this affects the overall mobile dev sector is now obvious as the winner of Pivot25 application says it all. Safaricom seriously need to make a change and appoint people who are not directly involved in the mobile dev sector.

One of the best things that the current govt has done with the annual Tax returns will cause transparency and a code of ethics within the private sector. For example, Employees will now have to declare if they have other businesses or sources of income while in employment. For Employers, I see a future that will contain a code of ethics and some declaration paragraphs introduced into contracts. This now takes us to an international level of doing things.

So in a nutshell, even before we think of changing a system, we need a bill of ethics and a drive towards it which will have far more reaching results. These Ethics is what built Nations. Remember what happened to Bill Clinton and Monica? It centred around ethics, morals and public servants and may have gone to the extent of impeachment of the then president.