Yesterday, talk show host Zororo Makamba put out a video commenting on the state of government websites. It was pretty surprising that official websites had such glaring errors. You would expect that the government would try to have platforms that are up to date and informative especially as people outside the country may visit these sites as their first port of call in search for information related to the country.
Where are official Government emails?
Makamba also raised the concern about government emails. Most of the government officials have Gmail emails and if you remember Hilary Clinton’s use of Gmail became a point of interest after she was hacked close to elections. Closer to home, Jonathan Moyo the former Minister of Higher & Tertiary Education, Science & Technology Development also had his Gmail hacked last year, so it’s still questionable whether these are the most secure email accounts to use for government guys.
Sites redirecting to non-government social media
The ICT Ministry site had links to redirect to their social media feeds, which is fair enough but the only problems is these links were redirecting to random accounts that have nothing to do with the ICT ministry or our government. Their link to twitter was redirecting to the ‘official’ twitter of….Twitter. The YouTube link was also redirecting to a channel called uTtube. You already guessed it, Facebook was redirecting to a Facebook Engineer’s account. The Facebook and Twitter links were updated and are now redirecting to the correct channels. The Youtube link is now showing an error message.
Are we in the information age or misinformation age?
The Ministry of women’s affairs states Honourable Nyasha Chikwinya as the Minister but the picture is of Oppah Muchinguri who was in this position from 2005-2009. The website for Zimbabwes Embassy to Sweden still lists Joice Mujuru as Vice President and the late Morgan Tsvangirai as the Prime Minister, which I think is utterly unacceptable.
So many questions
It’s worrying that in 2018 and in this ‘new dispensation’ we have this kind of misinformation going around. I wonder if the government even knew about these things or if they had been hacked.
Opposition Leader Robert Mugabe & Zimbabwe's Information Problems | POV w/Zororo Makamba
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6 comments
There’s nothing wrong with gmail accounts if your own infrastructure is in shambles. In fact Google’s messaging platform is by far the most secure. Some US municipalities and local governments use Google’s messaging platform but with their own domains. Our government has long way to go to operate professionally. Cronyism and naked corruption is the fabric of our government and it’s gonna take sulphuric acid and a long time to cleanse this government.
yaah true that only requires 5 bucks a month
Mmmmmmm yah “gona take sulphuric acid,”
You guys seem to focus more on politics than actual tech issues.
I resent the attitude people like you have. You want to make politics a no go area. All the points pointed out in the article and by the video area all valid tech related points. The government needs to embrace technology and take it more seriously. People Google things before making a decision and not having up to date information is unacceptable! I would content this article skirted some of the issues:
The government websites shown here look like crap out of the 90s
It’s probably a result of corrupt tender/contract awards
None of them are responsive and they all take eons to load
David just skip and find what interests you. If you cannot understand the tech in this article and how important it is for our government departments to adopt and use tech for our growth then I don’t know why you live. Politic is life and it is this apathy towards politics that has given politicians and leaders free reign to do as they please where people are answerable to them and not the other way round. We need to speak politics and how tech can help people participate more.