A Tanzanian Perspective of the Technical Aspects of IT Service Management Education

Abstract

Executive SummaryInformation technology (IT) professionals face markedly different kinds of challenges in developing countries from the ones in developed countries. Based on the research literature and our fourteen years of fieldwork in Iringa, Tanzania, we have identified eight groups of technical characteristics of IT work that significantly affect the work of IT service management professionals in that particular developing country context. Those groups are climate conditions on the site, physical security on the site, characteristics of premises, characteristics of rooms, quality of electricity, local area network, peripherals, and ICT users. Even though the characteristics of IT work in developing countries are a challenge for any IT professional, they all can be overcome with appropriate education and preparation. However, scarcity of capable IT professionals who can effectively manage IT systems is an issue in East Africa. Although the situation is widely acknowledged, there are no reports of educational initiatives to address this issue.We show that without a broad understanding of environmental effects, physical security, powerrelated issues, and characteristics of premises for ICT equipment, IT professionals cannot maintain ICT services of organizations on a sufficient level. Our identified solutions to practical challenges lead us to conclude that IT service management education must include some topics from the fields of electrical engineering and civil engineering in the IT curriculum. Those topics prepare students to overcome context-specific challenges in their future working milieu.Besides technical topics, organizational support for IT work plays a central role in the self-sustainability of ICT services. Hence, IT professionals should be able to advocate other members of an organiMaterial published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact Publisher@InformingScience.org to request redistribution permission. Editor: Irwin BrownIT Service Management Education zation. Advocacy work demands good management and communication skills and strong commitment to IT professionalism. Education for IT service management has to recognize these issues and emphasis, in its curriculum design, the role of management and leadership skills in a culturally sensitive way.

IT service management education in Tanzania

“…In addition, it has been argued that IT professionals who work in a developing country context need more profound knowledge about the factors affecting technology than IT professionals who work in a developed country do [19,35]. Without broad and fundamental knowledge about complete technical systems, IT professionals in developing countries cannot ensure that the ICT infrastructure fulfills its purpose (which is to provide services for its users at an acceptable level).…”

“…East Africa currently has a shortage of IT professionals who can design, implement, and maintain IT systems of organizations (e.g. [19,22]). …”

“…Learning the skill set that IT professionals should have requires that students use IT in practice. Development of local expertise requires and benefits from a heavy emphasis on practical training [19,40,42].…”

“…The most challenging aspect of the technology transfer process is the need for local expertise to use and maintain the new technical solutions (e.g. [19,40]). In this light, the main question regarding technology transfer turns out to be "How can technology be transferred in a way that its users gain a sense of ownership of technology?"…”

Development Projects and ICT: A Review of Non‐Technical Aspects

“…The task is often demanding because appropriate solutions vary between projects, and formal IT education rarely prepares IT professionals to cope with many technical issues that are uncommon in developed countries (Kemppainen, Tedre, & Sutinen, 2012). In addition, donor guidelines and experts can prepare ICT professionals for the bureaucracy and practices of the IDC community, but they have rarely appropriate guidelines or expertise for contextually relevant technological issues (Tedre, Kemppainen, & Ngumbuke, 2011).…”