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 organisations 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 organisation, which will then authorise 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 organisations 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 realised 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.
Bernard
Sabiti
The New
Vision Uganda