Released on 8 April, the final draft of the charter put together by the Nedlac ICT charter steering committee quietly slipped into the sector without much of a response. Yet the document is vastly different from all previous versions. It has been cut by two-thirds and contains significant changes, including: * the scrapping of annual targets; * the inclusion of the department of trade and industry`s code of good practice; * a number of changes to the scorecard. And yet no one really noticed.

Perhaps this is because the time it has taken to put the charter together and the intensity of the process have taken their toll. According to certain sources, proceedings even saw the multinationals appealing to President Thabo Mbeki.