RUNDU – The Ministry of Information and Communication Technology’s Rundu regional office received their newly-procured live- streaming equipment on Monday.
The equipment enables the office to broadcast events live on their social media platforms.
Getting the equipment also symbolised the establishment of the Government Information Centre (GIC), which the ministry has been rolling out to regions, which continues to signal the ICT ministry’s new era focused on digital capacity-building and bridging the digital divide, with a focus on rural areas.
The GIC is being expanded with new regional studios as part of a plan to decentralise information and empower regional councils to disseminate information about their regions. When they want to issue a press statement, they go straight to the regional GIC at the MICT offices and issue that press statement. “We are in the Kavango East region, and we are busy installing the regional government information centre. Since last year, we have been rolling out this project to regions, and last year alone we rolled it out to seven regions where we procured equipment for the GIC studios, and seven regions were remaining, and Kavango East was one of them,” said Reagan Malumo, the deputy director for audiovisual media in the ministry.
“Last week, we just finished setting up one in Omuthiya and Oshakati. The aim is to decentralise the GIC to the region, and we are installing a digital GIC studio that will be able to capacitate the region and the entire regional council and regional stakeholders that will now have a studio where they will or can come and share information on developments in their regions,” Malumo said.
MICT is encouraging the regional councils, regional governors, regional councillors and all heads of department in these regions to ensure that they utilise the GIC for the dissemination of information.
“It’s a digital studio; basically, when they come to do their sessions, it gives them the capability to go online and broadcast their content, and even the mainstream media can pool content from there and repurpose it for news. “We don’t want the regional stakeholders to always be going to the GIC in Windhoek, but we would want them to be in the regions because the service has been brought to the regions,” he said.
After Rundu, the team will move to set up the Otjozondjupa regional GIC, followed by Hardap, and conclude with the Omaheke region.