NJIT Lecturer Helps Digitize Government Services in Zambia

Zambia, a country in south-central Africa, is rich in natural resources but significantly lacking in technological and educational resources. This has made it difficult for the country to boost economic development, alleviate poverty and improve quality of life.

Enter Keith Williams, NJIT university lecturer in informatics, who is helping the Zambian government build the nation’s IT infrastructure from the ground up — setting up and delivering technological education at local universities as well as reengineering the government online.

William’s connection with Africa started in the summer of 2019. Prompted by one of his graduate students, he travelled to ZCAS University in Zambia on a Fulbright Fellowship to teach a course in mobile technology and set up a degree program in software development. 

While at ZCAS, Williams began working with the Zambian Ministry of Finance on an initiative to digitize government systems.

"Digital transformation is less about deploying specific types of technologies and more about improving the institutions’ ability to deliver services and spur economic activity. The project in Zambia is focused on establishing online systems that enable services that the government should offer, such as deploying the right systems and tools so people can register online for a driver’s license, incorporate a company, get a tax ID — things that we take for granted in the developed world," Williams said.

However, building large-scale software systems is challenging, especially when there is a shortage of native digital talent along with outdated approaches to developing new processes and systems.

"Initial efforts to build the e-government system were sluggish due to the traditional waterfall approach to software design and development," Williams said. The waterfall method is called such because it resembles a series of waterfalls, from requirements gathering to process analysis to coding and so on. Essentially a serial process, the development team cannot proceed to the next step until it has completed the previous one.

Williams deployed an agile approach once he got on board. Agile is an iterative approach where requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of cross-functional teams and their customers. Instead of betting everything on a big-bang launch at the very end of a lengthy process, an agile team delivers work in small, but consumable increments and continuously improves them.

Although the project is still in its early stages, the agile approach has proved to be effective. "Government systems are a moving target and many traditional systems development approaches simply cannot accommodate such rapid change. Accepting new systems requirements late in the process, delivering software for parts of the system early to break design logjams and having a single team of project managers and software developers has had a substantial impact," he said.

For Williams, the experiences he is gaining in Africa are multi-faceted. 

"Not only am I contributing in my own little way to providing new opportunities for young people and facilitating digital technologies and service improvements for African citizens, I’m also bringing back new knowledge to my NJIT classroom," he said.

C# and Microsoft Visual Studio are two industry-relevant courses that Williams implemented at NJIT. "It’s because I’ve had the opportunity to learn, apply and see the impact of these technologies during the e-government project."

This is just the start, he believes. Over the next few years, his hands-on work in Africa will inform and enhance the informatics curriculum at NJIT, providing students with real-world skills that will stay with them long after they graduate.