ICT4Dev

Here in Uganda friendships form quickly within the expat community, fed by a common need for kinship in a foreign place. Over the previous month my friends at the guest house and I have shopped together, visited tourist sites together, but I think what I may miss the most when I return are the conversations we've had. Particularly those around my favorite topic – technology.

Lars and Asreen are two of my friends from the guest house. They are students at Linneaus University in Sweden, and for the past month they’ve been wrapping up an ICT research project that began more than a year ago. On Thursday they presented their project findings as part of a series of ICT4Dev (ICT for Development) projects hosted by a consortium of Ugandan NGOs that included: Transparency International, Women’s Uganda Network (WOUGNET), Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), and Toro Development. Asreen invited me to see first-hand the incredible work going on in Uganda using ICT – here are project summaries of the presentations from that day.

Transparency International (TI) Uganda (ICT for Health Services Delivery)

This project was implemented within six sub counties across the Oyam and Lira districts after nearly five years of insurgency decimated Northern Uganda’s social services infrastructure. The intent of the project was to increase service transparency and accountability. One of the first project steps was to establish a toll free number that community members could call to report issues with their health centers. Calls started coming in reporting high rates of staff absenteeism, understaffing, worker attrition, poor hygiene, drug stock issues, and ghost workers on the payroll.

Once the initial data was received, the project team summarized it and began broadcasting the findings using local radio stations. They used these programs as well to discuss healthcare service improvement, engaging the entire community in a dialog on their right to healthcare and the role of the government in providing it. The groundswell of community support was then used to bring stakeholders into discussions that led to service improvements. Despite challenges of self-censorship, local call center power outages, and a low rate of ICT accessibility by women, the project showed positive results. Health center absenteeism was reduced by 30 percent and the hygiene issues that had been raised were corrected.

Toro Dev (Converging ICT Tools to Promote Public Accountability for Service Delivery)
This project in the Toro district of Uganda began in July of last year and continues through July of next year. The intent is to bring community members and local officials together in a more collaborative partnership. Previously, the general public didn’t really understand the roles of local political leaders, and the leaders weren't cooperatively supporting grassroots citizen engagement initiatives because they didn’t have the resources to implement requested improvements.

Similar to the Transparency International project, this project used local radio as well, but instead of using it purely as a means of communicating the findings from the community, it was instead used as a convergence point for the entire process. Local radio broadcasters were trained on Internet research and advocacy journalism, and they then used their training to follow a new program format that increased dialog around important community issues. The project also used mobile phones, Facebook and other social media to gather information and questions for the local politicians and service providers who would be invited to participate in discussions on air. The live and interactive radio programs presented both sides of the debate, and then after the broadcast, discussion continued online in social networks.

The project has only been in effect for a year, but it has already resulted in several infrastructure improvements including a gravity flow scheme and road repairs. This project faces several of the same challenges as the TI project, including access to electricity and self censorship by the general population. The greatest challenge, though, is the rapid growth of local radio stations which is having a dilutive effect on listenership.

WOUGNET Service Monitoring Project (Lars and Asreen’s Project)

Similar to the projects above, WOUGNET’s service monitoring project was established as a means of increasing accountability and transparency between the government and civil society through grassroots engagement in public service monitoring. The technologies were similar as well to the previously mentioned projects in that they included a combination of mature technologies (radio and mobile phone) and emerging technologies (social networks). But WOUGNET’s project used a “beep call” system (when a call is placed it connects for an instant to register a call back request). The advantage of this system is that because the cost is born entirely by the return call from the call center, the cost to the person reporting the issue is practically toll free.

The service monitoring project uncovered worker absenteeism and mismanagement of public resources. It also uncovered something very unique, an informal economy of payments made by some public sector workers to other staff who had not received their salaries from the government. The Ugandan government has been accused on several occasions of not paying or being slow to pay its workers. That lack of payment is one of the fundamental reasons cited in many of the service delivery failures in the public sector. 

In highlighting this and other issues, the project increased civic awareness. It also increased community involvement in monitoring of public services, and the Voluntary Social Accountability Committees (VSAC) in charge of monitoring services noted improved ICT skills. Moreover the community received a greater voice in sub county development plans and more equal distribution of benefit from government programs like NAAD and NUSAF. The end result was an improvement in service delivery in the communities in which the project was implemented.

ICT Capacity Building...CIPESA and Ric-Net

CIPESA has supported many ICT projects including the iParticipate election monitoring project which ended in 2013. They also have provided PCs, Internet access, training and mentorship to the e-society center in Kasese, the Northern Uganda Media Club and the Busoga Rural Open Source Development Initiative.

Ric-Net also provided support for the e-society center as part of its capacity building efforts for local communities. In addition to a social service accountability program (similar to those described above) the organization also helps local communities in Uganda build websites and e-libraries which provide on-line access to community information that previously were available solely by visiting local government offices in person. Here is an example of one of the e-libraries: Kalangala.

Final Thoughts...

What struck me the most about these projects is that they all effectively integrated technology into existing manual systems, and in doing so, increased incident reporting rates within the communities that the projects served. In other words, the use of technology improved citizen engagement, primarily by increasing information transparency and accelerating communication flows.

The question, though, that kept coming up in each of the presentations was the issue of sustainment. i.e. how to continue accountability efforts within the communities after project financial supports were removed. Change is a very difficult thing to sustain over time – just ask anyone who made a New Year’s resolution back in January – and when there are powerful forces working against change like corruption and entitlement, then it’s even more difficult.

So corruption impedes sustained positive change, but sustained positive change is what fights corruption. In software development that would be described as an infinite loop...you do not want an infinite loop in your program – it crashes the system.

I don’t have any solutions to this dilemma, but the trend in Ugandan Civil Society Organizations is to integrate technology within the scope of capacity building. This is why CIPESA and Ric-Net are establishing community centers that provide technology access and training.

I’ve talked with many people here who say that the only way forward is through technology. It’s not a question of if, but rather of how. Technology is a powerful communication tool that has the potential to give voice to 7 billion hearts and minds across the globe. It is the great equalizer and as such, one of the purest forms of democracy. Perhaps these projects are just chipping away at the edges of social inclusion, but assuming the momentum continues, they have the potential to become part of a much greater transformation.