East African Governments report on eGovernment progress

Last week the Regional Working Group (RWG) on eGoverenment constituted by the East African Community (EAC) secretariat in 2004 met in Arusha, Tanzania for the 10^th time to access the progress made in each country, identify regional opportunities for eGovernment and plan joint activities for the coming twelve months.

Indications from all the five EAC partner states are that eGovernment is slowly taking root and being recognized by the various governments as a transformational tool in public service delivery. It is also obvious that governments are feeling the heat of technology and is driving the change with mobile technologies making a major impact on the way services are being delivered. For instance short messaging services (sms) are gaining in popularity as a channel for public information delivery, from utility bills to examination results.

Country Round-up

Below is a summary of the highlights of progress in eGovernment from the five EAC member states as presented to the RWG.

Burundi

This is probably the most underdeveloped countries in the region has made some restructuring of its Transport, Post and Telecommunications ministry with objective of developing an e-Government strategy and its subsequent implementation. A new agency has been created under the ministry to handle all maters of Information and Communication Technologies including eGovernment. This action is meant to speed up the uptake of ICT within the government and the country at large.

Kenya

The implementation of the 2004 eGovernment Strategy is on-going despite the fact that the strategy was meant to have accomplished its mandate by end of last year. In the last twelve months, the Directorate of eGovernment has trained more than 200 officers from different ministries and departments on ICT. All the 167,000 government offers have been allocated a .go.ke email address to the district level. This according to the officials from the Directorate of eGovernment, will ease communication within government. The Directorate has also recruited and seconded to different ministries 78 ICT officers and 200 other ICT staff.

It was also reported that in 2007, the government undertook an eGovernment awareness campaign countrywide in an effort to sensitive public servants and the community of the benefits of eGovernment. All government ministries have websites which are currently being upgraded to accommodate to a standard template with the same look and feel and to allow the next phase of web presence - online transactions. Other developments reported include the online jobs application implemented by the Public Service Commission, the Integrated Population Registry System, the modernization of the Company Registry and ICT infrastructure development at provincial headquarters and government buildings.

Uganda

The government of Uganda has placed ICTs under one political leadership for policy guidance and direction by creating a ministry of Information and Communications Technology. The young ministry is charged with the implementation of the country’s ICT policy framework and the newly crafted eGovernment Strategy. To get things going, the government has initiated the National Data Transmission Backbone and e-Government infrastructure project which is meant to deploy a nationwide fiber-optic backbone and a government network. So far all government ministries are connected to one network. On the policy and regulatory side, the principles and objectives of the Cyber laws Bill have been approved by Cabinet. This paves way for the bill to be drafted and sent to parliament for discussion before being enacted into law.

Tanzania

Tanzania is the first country in the region to develop and adopt a Policy for ICT back in March 2003. A cabinet decision to fast-track eGovernment was taken in 2004 and recommended the establishment of a focal point to coalesce and reinforce the many existing, fragmented and isolated e‑Government initiatives; building of a national wide-area network to carry voice and data communications efficiently among all levels of Government; and to create awareness of the opportunities for strategic ICT use across the public service.

Though the country is yet to publish its strategy, eGovernment has been identified as a critical ingredient in the success of the objectives and outcomes of the second phase of the Public Service Reform Program. Under this initiative, eGovernment initiatives are expected to augment the operations of ministries, departments and agencies an intervention to improve the quality of service to the community.

Rwanda

Like in Burundi, Rwanda has also restructured its lead ICT organ, Rwanda Information Technology Authority (RITA) and place it under the Office of the President to give it the necessary clout to move the ICT and eGovernment agenda forward. This now means that the operations of RITA will be under the watchful eye of His Excellency Paul Kagame himself. RITA is currently implementing the NICI plan 2006-2010, probably the most elaborate ICT policy framework in the region with 28 e-Government Projects coordinated under 8 Directorates.

Under the eGovernment Directorate, 7 projects are already underway including the GovNet, a WAN connecting all government ministries; Video Conferencing, National ID and SmartGov, a budgeting and accounting system for government; GateKeeper, an application to help immigration control and secure at the country’s borders; it includes a Visa issuing component ; ProfileMaster, a software designed for National Security Services and Military Intelligence and Documents, a correspondence tracking system designed for the special needs of Ministries and large organizations (workflow management, document management and productivity measuring tool).

With this review, one can see there is movement in the realm of eGovernment in the region despite the challenges of resources, legislation and infrastructure. Burundi and Tanzania are yet to formally publish and adopt national strategies on eGovernment. This does not mean that there is not eGovernment activity, but their less coordination as each ministry runs and implements its own projects based on their mandate and priorities. Tanzania has taken the first steps as a draft strategy does exist but requires the political push to finalise it and start implementing. Burundi on the other hand has started making initial plans to have a stakeholders’ meeting in April 2008 to chart the way forward on eGovernment.

Kenya and Uganda seem to have gained momentum in their eGovernment efforts. From the briefing, it was clear that Uganda’s focus is on developing infrastructure while Kenya has already started rolling out some eGovernment applications including the popular Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) voter status check via sms. Rwanda on the other hand seems to have taken a wholistic approach to ICT including eGovernment and with the support and goodwill from the Country’s CEO, the sky is the limit.