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| Kampala |
If one wanted information from a certain ministry in Uganda, the process would involve paying a
physical visit to the ministry offices and asking a head of department for
certain information. He or she would tell you to write to the Permanent
Secretary (PS) who is the accounting officer and also the 'custodian of all
information' in the ministry.
You will then go and write a letter addressed to the PS,
which will arrive in the "registry", an office which exists at almost
all government ministries and agencies and whose role is to handle
correspondence. (If the ministry is housed in a multi storey building, as is
the case for most of them, the registry is at the ground floor in most cases).
The letter will spend perhaps a month or two (waiting for
other mail perhaps) before it can begin its maiden voyage upstairs to the PS'
office, which is perhaps at the 10th floor. That journey may take another
month, as support and clerical staff figure out which relevant office it would
otherwise have been addressed to. If the person seeking information is lucky,
the letter will finally reach the attention of someone in the PS' office, where
a response will then be prepared. This may take another month!
Getting information from civil society organizations
is not any easier either. If it is an international NGO, they will tell you
that you need to ask for the information from the headquarters of the organization,
which will then authorize this country office to release the information to
you. Similarly, if you walked into an NGO office upcountry and you request for
certain information, say a report, you will be referred to that NGO's Kampala
office. All this wastes time and money.
Yet this entire problem could be avoided if all the
stakeholders involved embraced open data, a new phenomenon that is increasingly
becoming the new normal in development. Open data, or open development, as some
are calling it, in a more comprehensive sense, is where organizations are using
Information technologies to provide and share information using simple computer
applications.
Actually, there is no specific definition for Open
Development, other than the fact that the idea represents a new vision about
development, how it comes about and the role that different stakeholders can
play. It is about people having the information and resources that they need to
hold duty-bearers to account and to make well-informed decisions to improve
their lives.
Open data enhances transparency and
accountability about resources that are available to be invested in
development, how those resources are invested and what results they achieve.
But besides juts resource information, other data on several aspects of human
development, like crime reports, weather, roads availability, traffic,
examinations, health, etc can be shared as well
For example, Kenya Open Data initiative, a government led
platform for providing information, dumps various troves of information on
district/county poverty status, school performances, budgets, etc on a website
and these data are just a click away! Luckily, even in Uganda, the Open data
idea is not entirely without precedence. UNICEF had a
wonderful tool known as Devtrac, where information on health centres, water (like
boreholes) and schools upcountry can be got an interactive website
Most government ministries and agencies also have websites,
only that these are rarely updated and have only very little information.
Ministries like finance which does better also upload heavy documents, which
are not user friendly. Fortunately, the Government realized the need for making
the most use of ICTs by establishing the Ministry of ICT and the National IT
authority, the ICTs regulatory body. They have already launched the e-governance
master plan, which is a grand step in the right direction.
One of the new ministers, Frank
Tumwebaze, whose docket is the Presidency, in an interview with
the New Vision reportedly, said one of his immediate plans is to "link the
presidency to ordinary citizens". Using ICTs by embracing Open Data would
be a good way to start. The writer is a governance analyst at Development
Research and Training (DRT), a local think tank. The views expressed here are
my own, and not those of DRT.
New Vision