Editor, RE: "Power utility embraces technology to enhance efficiency, reduce losses” (The New Times, November 10).

I commend the Energy Utility Corporation Limited (EUCL) Managing Director and team for this timely initiative and wish them all the best.

However, I have a concern on capacity building. I note that this system is being implemented by a South African company; who owns the source code? What is the role of the EUCL IT team support? How is the maintenance contract formulated?

I ask these questions because vendor systems have one fatal flaw. If ownership of the source code belongs to the vendor, then in future if EUCL wishes to change any system parts, they are forced to bring in the vendor to change the system, and of course with charges. This creates a long-term dependency on the vendor and is expensive in the long run.

The maintenance contract can be very expensive and basically locks you to the vendor for quite a number of years. EUCL IT team needs to be very well trained in the system development such that any changes to the system can be done in Rwanda instead of flying in engineers to enhance/adjust the system.

Training in-house IT teams means that Rwanda will have its own local software development engineers, while ensuring that costs of maintenance to the system are low and not locked to specific vendors. Concerned Citizen