The Internet of Things is championed by an extension of the Internet through the inclusion of physical objects combined with an ability to provide smarter services to the environment as more data becomes available. Various application domains ranging from Green-IT, energy efficiency, logistics and predictable agriculture are already starting to benefit from the Internet of Things concepts. But there are challenges, most explicitly in areas of trust and security, policy and governance required to ensure a fair and trustworthy IOT which provides value to all of society. Internet of Things is high on the research agenda of several multinationals as well as the European Commission and countries such as China. The research conducted is driving the creation of a useful and powerful backbone. The benefits thereof to developing and emerging economies are significant, and strategies to realise these need to be found.
As we may be aware, according to Gartner Inc. (a technology research and advisory corporation), by 2020 there would be more than 20.8 billion connected devices that would be sharing information and getting smart as a result of the information they are receiving from the cloud. what this means is soon garbage companies would be connecting bins to the internet so as to ascertain when they are full so a garbage truck can empty them in timely order, car parks (which are becoming common in our community) would be smart enough to alert you of parking space and how long you have been parked at the facility, you can turn off and turn on many different gadgets at home at the push of a button on your mobile device be it phone tablet or laptop; if you forget to turn off the heater at home (which i do most of the time) you can easily be alerted and then turn it off remotely to prevent wastage of electricity and even disaster. In about 4 years time everything would be smart even trees would be fitted with smart devices to collect data on the wind or the sun. Clearly IOT would transform the way we collect, store, analyze, consume, replicate and disseminate data and between all of these processes there is a call for standard infrastructure, regulation and local developer capacity. Economies around the world are focusing attention to this new use of data to transform business models, reimagine customer experiences and reinvent public services. The Internet of Things cannot be brought to life, however, without a robust IT infrastructure to underpin it. So while Western governments focus on repurposing and in some cases overhauling legacy IT infrastructures to seize the IoT opportunity, Africa has the agility to start on a clean sheet and establish an infrastructure robust enough to support the current and future mobile, cloud and big data needs of its population. We stand to gain more from this new age of data consumption.
Businesses would change in the next 10 years than in the past fifteen years. – Bill Gates, Business at the speed of thought
The world moved from the stone era which saw stones used to make most tools and implements, to an agricultural age when human work, and interaction patterns were fundamentally affected by systems geared to the processing and distribution of food. Then the industrial age set in around 1760 introducing a period where machines changed people’s way of life as well as their methods of manufacture setting the tone for the information age or the Computer age characterized by the shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based on information computerization. The internet of things is the main act of the information age as it vividly states the use of this plethora of information we have been collecting. But are we ready in Ghana to embrace this phenomenon and provide the needed backbone and skill set for its thriving. In our part of the world our ministries are still running paper systems and purchasing file cabinets, hiring record keepers and dedicating long halls for book keeping. Our Open Data Initiative is giving datasets in excel format and are mostly hardly updated. we must understand, the Internet of Things is not another movement it is a big deal and it comes with bid demands and a healthy appetite.
If the 1980’s were about quality and the 1990’s were about reengineering then the 2000’s will be about velocity; about how quickly the nature of business will change, about how quickly business itself would be transacted, about how information access will alter the lifestyle of consumers and their expectations of business. – Bill Gates, Business at the speed of thought
There are many different chips that would make IOT thrive in Ghana:
Cloud
The internet of things is based heavily on the cloud, devices are sending information to the cloud and vice versa and we cannot disassociate the two. Any institution or government that is interested in harnessing the power of Internet of Things would have to embrace the power of cloud. Here in Ghana the cloud culture is yet to be cultivated by businesses, the government, businesses are too sceptical of their information staying in the cloud and governments are too clueless as to what the cloud holds and the necessary infrastructure that is required as well as policies and regulations to govern these infrastructure. Businesses and Ministers that are using the Cloud are pretty much underutilizing the service and are mostly just harnessing a one way ticket to a two way ride; they are just sending information for backup and restore purposes and not analyzing and studying the data collected to better serve their customers and citizens well enough. The information age does not only tell us to collect data but also to analyze and study this data to the minutest detail.
Security
It is not possible to talk about IOT without talking about security they go hand in hand. IOT would take a lot of our privacy and security away but of course it is expected IOT is hinged on collecting the minutest data possible from you the internet would require to know your medical history, your food preference, your taste in automobiles, your fashion choices, daily routines and routes, and many others. All this information would be held by machines. We all know the issues that come with machines holding data else allow me to talk about hackers cracking servers and raking peoples passwords and personal data as happened when pparently, the NSA and Britain’s spy agency GCHQ (and/or other governments/agencies) were able to hack into the BlackBerry streams of government officials attending a G20 summit in London in 2013 and Sony’s Playstation Network back in 2011 a few months ago. But beyond all of this security talk the positives far outweigh the negatives especially if it is well regulated and controlled. Devices that should or would be sending data to and from the cloud must meet some security standards, and multiple end to end ancryption must be top priority and handled by certified professionals who are well vexed in the same. As much as IOT has its different
Collaboration
Internet Accessibility
Telcos have a big role to play in all of this talk about IOT, they hold the access bit of this entire interconnection of things, accessibility is a major driver to allow people and things everywhere to receive and collect data. People all over the country should have access to good internet even if not the current standard of 4G a 2G should be available. IOT is not a border restricted and would go as far as accessibility allows to collect data and send data. IOT actually makes the quest for data accessibility even more valid.
Local Content
We need to build local capacity, and local infrastructure. Our IOT story should be one of local content with a Global reach, lets collect, analyse and protect our own data. We should not go in with a taste for foreign things, as mentioned earlier we have a chance to start from the ground up to build infrastructure and capacity among professionals to manage this data well enough for good. Schools must begin including IOT related courses in their curriculum, Lets send interested people out to go learn from other countries and come implement and help build our own system here.
