We aren’t trying to offend here, but really ,why?

According to a recent report by TechZim, it seems Harare City council officers will be getting Apple iPads to use in the field. This is confirmed by a statement from the City Council’s finance committee’s minutes as reported by the Herald highlighted below:

Under matters for which the chairperson’s consent had been obtained, the committee was advised that the tender processes (of iPads) had been completed and the matter was now with the Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe and it was anticipated that approval would be received within the month of June 2019

An expected amount of ZWL 23000 should be spent on acquiring the devices and considering that TechZim already went well out of their way to talk about how the money spent on buying these tablets might be borrowed and why it’s frustrating and aggravating to hear such news , I’m going to ask a simple question : Why? Why do City Council need iPads? What specific work do they want to do on them and how will laptops be insufficient for this? And why specifically do they need Apple’s tablet offerings in the first place? After all I doubt the IT staff in the council buildings use strictly apple hardware and model their infrastructures as such (which are basically the only setups where an iPad truly flourishes due to being highly incompatible with other platforms like Windows). These are all questions that honestly, I do feel raise an eyebrow just as much as the one of who approved the budget in the first place. Again, TechZim already went into detail as to why the government doesn’t need to be spending on endeavors such as this but we have to reiterate this fact as well. We can understand a need for more mobile computing solutions in the field for some of these workers, but we can’t honestly think of any scenarios where an iPad is going to be 100% ideal that any of the officers couldn’t use a laptop in. In fact, despite its recent iPadOS upgrades, we’ve gone into pretty lengthy detail about how consumer tablets like the iPad are a lot less useful than laptops or Windows based tablets in comparison. And we’ll open ourselves up to correction by City Council’s IT department here but doesn’t bringing a totally new fleet of devices running a different operating system give you guys a few headaches? And why did you have to choose such expensive offerings? Amusingly enough as far as capabilities go a 50-dollar android tablet actually matches most tasks a 300 dollar iPad can. And what’s worse is a 80-100 dollar Windows 10 tablet runs full Windows, meaning it’s just as capable as your desktop or laptop PC while being much smaller.

Terrible IT ordering decisions have always run rampant in Zimbabwean government divisions and parastatals. As someone who knows a few guys working for IT in those offices, I’m well aware of that. But at a time when every bit of money makes the average Zimbabwean cringe or go into a frightened state, I think it’s safe to say that Harare City Council has really left people at a loss for words here with what seems like a frivolous and unwise spending decision. The one bright side here could be that they are making the common mistake a lot of people have of calling any tablet (Android, Windows or otherwise) an iPad, which could mean City Council members may be getting cheaper Android tablets instead that are being called iPads. And for the record, if any City Council members are reading this, it’s not that we don’t want you to have more devices to ease your workflow, but let’s be honest how badly do you need them? If your answer to that isn’t “terribly” , then like everyone else in Zim right now you just need to tighten your belts and make do with what you have.

Share your Thoughts on Council’s iPad procurement in the comments below.

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