Government will encourage reliance on existing forms of community organisation, including the chiefly system, religious communities and school committees. The Government acknowledges that, even if efforts are made to create an enabling environment as per the criteria above, not every stakeholder will exercise the same ownership and drive. Furthermore, the capacity of various stakeholders to implement specific projects would also differ. Therefore, especially in the context of plentiful opportunities for actions that would contribute to the overall objective of this Policy, the Government considers that actual levels of ownership and drive as well as stakeholder preparedness and capacity are important factors in deciding on priorities for initiatives. The Government will use appropriate mechanisms, including competitive application processes, for the purpose of identifying and evaluating such. Reasonable requirements for stakeholders to demonstrate capacity (including appropriate external support) to implement specific initiatives before being entrusted such implementation would normally not be considered to be a violation of a requirement for such stakeholders to be afforded substantial freedom and discretion. Notwithstanding the above, the Government considers that line and local stakeholders need to be appropriately supported in order for them to effectively exercise their role described in this section. Therefore the Government will establish, support and/or promote an appropriate supportive environment that would include such elements as peer-support networks (where appropriately, assisted by experts) and other forms of sharing of best practices; awareness, education and capacity building initiatives; guidance, mentorship and advice; coordination, central knowledge-base and, where appropriate, centralised services (such as marketing or a marketplace of solutions) that would enable appropriate synergies; as well as monitoring and evaluation as a basis for learning and feedback. In certain cases specific technical measures will have to be made available to support line or local decision making56. Policy as a Process The Government notes that the policy development is not a one-off exercise. Complexity of systems affecting ICT development means that it is impossible to identify and address all the risks and other factors, affecting success of chosen policy tools and policy implementation, in advance. An invincibly future-proof policy design is an unattainable objective. Therefore the Government considers that it is important to put in place systems and processes that would ensure constant adaptability of the Policy. The way to achieve this is to ensure that policy design and implementation are not treated as standalone separated activities, but are integrated into one cohesive process with built-in feedback loops (as per the figure below). The Government will integrate the approach above into the ICT development governance systems and processes. In this context, the Government recognises importance of a meaningful framework for monitoring and evaluation, which would be based on clear targets evaluated using “SMART” (i.e., specific; 56 e.g., implementation of decisions on electronic content that should and could be accessible in schools may need to be supported by appropriate technical measures (e.g., appropriate content management systems). 48 National Information and Communication Technology Policy

Select target paragraph3