SECTOR 2 Most of the acts and gazettes are not accessible electronically, unless a particular ministry or government institution takes its own initiative, such as the NCC, which has a number of working documents, such as draft policies and bills, on its website.13 In 2007 the government launched a 15-year education improvement plan called Education and Training Sector Improvement Plan (ETSIP). One of the aims of ETSIP is “to improve access to ICTs to enhance learning and administration including making ICT a subject and a cross-curricular tool, staff training in ICTs, and developing support services and structures for deployment and maintenance”.14 The Ministry of Education has an ICT policy for education, in existence since 2003, but it seems that government was not prioritising putting computers in schools itself, but was leaving this up to NGOs or donors. An attempt by an NGO to provide information technology to schools around the country was stopped by government in early 2009. The SchoolNet initiative was launched in February 2000 to recycle old computers to give schools around the country access to this technology, as well as to the internet. The NGO used free and open-source (Linux) software, to keep costs down, and uses wireless networking and solar panels to link up rural schools, which were off the electricity grid. Apart from free hardware, schools also received free training on the OpenLab operating systems and subsidised telephone service for internet connectivity.15 From April 2009, however, SchoolNet was instructed to stop providing technical service support to government schools by the Ministry of Education (MoE). MoE had further decided to obtain internet connectivity from Telecom via XNet directly, and no longer wants SchoolNet as an intermediary internet service provider. This was after SchoolNet had put computers and internet connectivity into more than 400 schools around Namibia, and provided technical service.16 Some panelists expressed the suspicion that the government succumbed to pressure from Microsoft, which is fighting the use of Linux. 13 http://www.ncc.org.na/page.php?pn=publication 14 Draft Communications Bill, dated March 12, 2008 http://74.125.77.132 search?q=cache:Tgi7CMa7NRIJ:www.infodev.org/en/ Document.420pdf+namibia+etsip+computers&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=na&client=firefox-a 15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Net_Namibia 16 Additional information supplied by Joris Komen, SchoolNet Director, on May 29, 2009. 38 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER NAMIBIA 2009