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28Sep

Open Development: The Engine for Uganda’s Advancement

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Press statement to commemorate the International Right to Know Day
Kampala 28th September – Today is the International right to know Day. The International Right To Know Day began on September 28, 2002, in Sofia, Bulgaria at an international meeting of access to information advocates who proposed that a day be dedicated to the promotion of freedom of information worldwide. The goal of RTK Day is to raise global awareness of individuals’ right to access information and to promote access to information as a fundamental human right. It seeks to highlight the benefits of open, transparent and accountable governments.
On 11-12 September, representatives of diverse civil society organizations (CSOs), government, development partners, private sector, academia and citizens, met at Hotel Africana in Kampala for the Open Development Stakeholders Workshop with the objective of Understanding the Open Development landscape and issues in Uganda, and proposing a programme focus, strategy and design.
Open development is where organisations are using Information technologies, among other information sharing channels, to provide and share information. 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. In the end, all the stakeholders involved in this information sharing chain benefit from this mutually reinforcing ecosystem.
Recognising the positive steps that the Uganda government has taken in Promoting transparency and good governance as enshrined in the Constitution and other regulatory and policy frameworks, the delegates nevertheless underscored the importance of putting in practice the several statutory pronouncements that government has into the access to information act, the constitution, and other government documents. The workshop further highlighted the importance of civil society, development partners and private sector opening up as well; as these efforts work better when all stakeholders with sharable information pull their efforts together.
The conference ended with the establishment of the Uganda open development collaboration and the partners agreed to establishment of a web portal where all sorts of development information; on Agriculture, Health, education, energy, will be displayed so that anyone who needs the data can access it. It will espouse robust data collection, access and use techniques as well as a feedback mechanism that allow interface with the producers and users of information.
The conference also ended with a call to action to all stakeholders to fast track openness as a way of promoting transparency and accountability, thereby improving development outcomes:
The call was to:
(a) The Uganda government to:

  • review and repeal policies, regulations, legislation and practices that are restrictive or inconsistent with the above provisions and with regional and international open data standards and that interfere with access to information and development;
  • prioritise the development of capacity and awareness, among stakeholders to facilitate open development, access to and dissemination of data and information;
  • sign on to, and apply the principles of, the Open Government Partnership;
  • ensure transparency of, and access to, public information;
  • ensure that the process of data access involves a wide cross-section of stakeholders, including civil society organisations, private sector, and development partners;
  • develop and support partnerships with civil society organisations on specific open development initiative.

(b) Uganda’s development partners to:

  • Openly share information on funding availability and disbursements in line with the provisions of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI);
  • Promote collaboration and networking with civil society organisations and governments in promoting open development;
  • Recommit to adoption of the Paris principles on aid effectiveness and the Accra protocol;
  • Support efforts that are aimed at promoting transparency of all resources, including budgets, aid, resources about extractive industries, and about private flows.

(c) Civil society organisations in Uganda to:

  • Adopt transparency principles as stipulated in the Civil Society Quality Assurance Mechanism (QuAM);
  • Strengthen support and collaboration to develop a network of ogranisations that actively advocate for and implement open development;
  • Create and use clear feedback mechanisms of engagement in identifying and addressing citizens needs;
  • Facilitate community and or citizen documentation of evidence on what works (or not);
  • Facilitate partnerships with development partners and government;
  • Encourage the development of technologies and applications that innovatively engage citizens and promote community participation in governance and account ability;
  • Participate actively in positively influencing uptake of open data and open development policy and governance issues at national, regional and international level.

(d) The private sector, think-tanks and academia in Uganda to:

  • Encourage research and innovation creating applications that can promote Open development in Uganda through innovative applications; Create partnerships and collaborations in developing open data platforms;
  • Invest in the process of developing open development and open data processes;
  • Contribute to analysis of primary data for ease of access to citizens; and
  • Explore opportunities for making communication products accessible and at reason able cost to users, in particular communities.

In the spirit of the international right to know day, and in support of the above
proclamations, therefore, partners:

  1. Agreed to collaborate in an Open Development Initiative that brings together stake holders in data access, analysis, and use, as well as developers of applications;
  2. Reiterated the need for a multi stakeholder approach to open development building on previous and current experiences and expertise, to minimize duplicating efforts, promote effective resource utilization, and enhance coordinated partnerships; and
  3. Recognized that openness at the national, regional and global levels is essential for development, democratisation and empowerment.

For further information, Contact 
1. Beatrice Mugambe – Development Research and Training (DRT) 
[email protected] 
2. Richard Ssewakiryanga – Uganda National NGO Forum 
[email protected] 
3. Lillian Nalwoga – CIPESA [email protected] 
4. Charles Lwanga-Ntale – Development Initiatives: 
[email protected] 
Read the full statement here.

19Jul

Phone tapping: Uganda Govt seeks 200bn

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By Edris Kiggundu
The government is looking for Shs 205bn to purchase equipment and establish systems for the interception of communication and registration of simcards.
This request is contained in the ministerial policy statement for the Office of the Presidency for financial year 2012/2013. The money will be channelled through the Internal Security Organisation, which will work closely with the Office of the President. The statement, tabled before Parliament this week, neither gives details about the nature or type of equipment to be purchased nor a breakdown of how the money will be spent.
All the statement says is that the money will be used to “procure and acquire assorted classified communication equipment.”
The statement says the equipment was supposed to be purchased last year but it was not possible because of financial constraints.
How it works
In July 2010, Parliament passed a bill, seeking to authorise the tapping of telephones and other private communication for security purposes. President Museveni assented to it a couple of months later.  Now law, it provides for interception and monitoring of certain communication in the course of transmission. It also allows the monitoring of postal or any other related service or system.
The law stipulates that only a designated judge issues a warrant of interception if there is reasonable ground to believe that the offence might result into a threat to life. A warrant would also be issued if the judge believes that information to be gathered concerns an actual threat to national security, national economic interest, and/or threat to national interest involving the state’s international relations. A warrant shall be valid for only three months.
Reliable sources in intelligence told us yesterday that at the moment government has limited capacity to tap phones. Government, they added, uses equipment it procured from Libya in the early 1990s.
“What is done is to get a printout from the telecommunication companies whereby they can know that phone number X called Y,” one source told us.
Even then, in most cases, security agencies are not in position to know exactly what X told Y. The new equipment is, therefore, expected to bridge this gap. According to various internet sites, there are a number of ways a telephone conversation can be monitored. For instance, Wikipedia says, one of the parties may record the conversation either on a tape or solid-state recording device, or on a computer running call recording software.
The recording, whether overt or covert, may be started manually, automatically by detecting sound on the line (VOX), or automatically whenever the phone is off the hook. As for mobile phones, especially the 3G type, the same website points out that they are harder to monitor because they use digitally-encoded and compressed transmission.
However, they can be tapped with the cooperation of the phone company, something the government has done before. For instance, in the aftermath of the 2010 July bombings, security agencies working with a major telecom company, were able to track and arrest three suspects – Idris Magondu, 42, Hussein Hassan Agad, 27, and Muhammed Aden Addow, 25 – thanks a phone that had been abandoned at a bar in Makindye.
Using the serial number of the phone, investigators were able to discern records related to calls made or received on the phone. That’s how they got to know that the phone belonged or was at least one time frequently used by Hussein Hassan. The ministerial policy statement notes that regional threats of terrorism have since increased and so has subversion, espionage and politically motivated crime. Therefore, the equipment will help government curtail these vices.
Simon Mulongo, the Bubulo West lawmaker who doubles as Vice Chairman of Parliamentary committee on Internal Affairs, told The Observer that he supported government’s decision to intercept communication provided this was not abused. On the price of the equipment, Mulongo said: “It is something that Parliament will have to crosscheck to establish whether the figure is reasonable.”
This article was published by the The Observer newspaper on July 13, 2012.

19Jul

East African countries put IT spending on back burner

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By Edris Kisambira
Though East Africa as a region has been quick to adopt technology compared to other areas in Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda appear to have de-emphasized ICT in budget plans for the next 12 months.
The money allocated to different sectors by the governments of those nations, and the lack of mention of ICT in the spending blueprints for the coming year, seem to indicate that the countries are either slowing down investments in a sector they regard as key or are postponing further funding.
Uganda’s US$4.8 million ICT sector allocation is the lowest in the past three years, according to an analysis by the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA). The budget blueprints were reviewed by finance ministers on June 15. Looking at the Uganda allocation, the funding amounts to only 0.13 percent of projected government expenditures over the next 12 months. Uganda had spent $7.1 million last year and $5.7 million the year before that.
Ugandan Finance Minister Maria Kiwanuka said new technology was driving the country’s efforts to give more people access to financial- and business-related services, considering that telecom services like mobile money payments have registered more users today than commercial banks. Kiwanuka said the government, for example, will in the next 12 months establish a one-stop center to provide online registration services for the various licenses required to start a business.
Meanwhile the Rwanda government, taking notable strides in promoting ICT infrastructure investments and enabling usage by citizens in recent years, did not specifically provide for ICT spending for the next 12 months, and no explanation was given.
John Rwangombwa, Rwanda’s finance minister, said in the next 12 months, the government will help enhance operations of the Carnegie Mellon University in the country and the Kigali Techno Pole tech area to boost ICT for private sector development. Speaking in parliament on June 15, Rwangombwa reported completion of work on a number of investments in the past few years, including the national fiber-optic cable backbone, a wireless broadband system for the capital Kigali, a national data center and an embassy intranet.
Kenyan Finance Minister Robinson Njeru Githae did not say a lot in his budget speech as far as the ICT sector goes but allocated some $5.6 million for the purchase of computers for schools and removed import duty on computer software.
Tanzania, which has in the past allocated far less money in comparison to its neighbors, increased duty on mobile telephone airtime, taking it into a league that Uganda has long dominated, where telephone services are taxed steeply.
Tanzanian Finance Minister William Augustao Mgimwa announced a $2.5 million allocation to strengthen ICT “so as to improve access to various services including information, access to domestic and external market, revenue collection, health services, education, financial services, etc.”
Compared to Uganda’s allocation of $4.8 million and Kenya’s $5.6 million, the $2.5 million Tanzania allocated to the sector pales in comparison, given it also has been spending less in the recent past.
Commenting about the cutback in spending on ICT in Uganda, Godfrey Mutabazi, the executive director of industry regulator Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), said, “How do you expect the industry to grow when you are not investing back?”
Ashnah Kalemera, an analyst at CIPESA, said ICT is not a field that most governments in the East African region have great experience or competence in. “But also, ICT is a sector whose full benefit is yet to be fully appreciated by government bureaucrats, as indeed like most members of the public,” Kalemera said. “Its contribution is largely seen as indirect, and there is thus a need to have studies that show direct impacts of ICT on development if regional governments are to be convinced to significantly raise budgetary allocations to ICT.”
East Africa is a leader in adoption of mobile devices and, led by Kenya, in adoption of mobile money. Kenya’s teledensity is 71 percent, while both Tanzania and Uganda have passed the 50 percent mark. Millions across the region routinely use their mobile phones to make financial transactions, which in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda total up to no less than $1.4 billion per month for all the three countries, with Safaricom’s M-Pesa accounting for the bulk of that money.
This article was published by Computer World on July 16, 2012

26Jun

Kasese equipped with the use of ICT tools to share and disseminate information

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As ICT becomes a necessity in our daily activities and operations, it has been approved that it’s quite easy to managed access and share information in our communities simply using ICT tools. Kasese district officials, the members from the civil society and Community members have been fully equipped with ICT skills.
This training which took place on 21st and 22nd June 2012 at the E-Society Resource Centre located at Kasese District Head Quarters was done by officials from The Collaboration for ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA).
CIPESA is one of the partners of the E-Society Resource Centre Kasese which voluntarily came in to support the centre in addition to what Ric-Net had offered. The training was facilitated by Ms. Lillian Nalwoga from CIPESA assisted by Mr. Jack Sseruwo from CIPESA and Edgar Asiimwe Napolean from SPIDER. The attendance and participation was good and everybody who attended at least was able to create personal weblogs, twitter accounts and had a full understanding of how to use other social networks like face book and Skype to promote citizen participation in governance issues. The training was launched by the assistant LCV Chairperson Hon. Muhindo Tadeo who greatly thanked the management of CIPESA for the partnership and pointed out that he is an ICT compliant who uses a lot of social networking to carry out his activities. The training revealed that in the near future, the world will be required to use much of social media like face book, twitter, weblogs, Skype, Google+ and so many others as innovations go on. A great thanks goes to the District Information Office for organizing the training to enhance civic competence.
This article was published by Kasese District News on June 23, 2012.

08Jun

Making government accountable to citizens in Uganda and the region

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Lillian Nalwoga from the Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) coordinated research on open governance in Uganda as part of APC’s Action Research Network project. “Citizens, academia, the private sector and civil society need to be more involved in the implementation of open governance,” says Nalwoga in an interview withAPCNews.
APCNews: What is the relevance of this research’s subject to you? Why do you think it is important to promote OGD frameworks in general and in particular on Eastern Africa? What are your comments on Uganda’s situation in the subregional context in this sense?
Lillian Nalwoga: The open government data (OGD) research is relevant to CIPESA’s work in enabling policy makers in the region to understand ICT policy issues and for various stakeholders to use ICTs to improve livelihoods. Most especially, the research is important for CIPESA’s wider programmes in the use of ICTs for democratic governance. Understanding Uganda’s OGD readiness and the perceptions and needs of citizens is an important aspect in gauging the level to which ICTs can be used in promoting an open government, as well easier and faster flow of information between public officials and citizens.
It is important to promote OGD frameworks in East Africa because of the benefits open governance provides. Benefits such as an increase in transparency and accountability would in turn enable citizens to access better social services. East African countries are at different levels of development in all sectors including ICT. Kenya scored highest in Sub-Saharan Africa with the launch of an open data portal in July 2011. The website (www.opendata.go.ke) allows Kenyan citizens to freely access government data on numerous sectors and population demographics. More recently, Tanzania has followed suit with the launch of www.opengov.go.tz. Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are lagging behind their counterparts. Promoting OGD frameworks will allow the countries lacking openness of data to learn and share best practices on how to better promote their efforts especially under the East African Community (EAC). OGD frameworks within the region will allow for easier integration of EAC as member states will easily learn share and access developments in the region while allowing for better service delivery within the region.
In Uganda, promoting an OGD framework will not only make government accountable to citizens but also foster a crop of open public servants and departments. Citizens will get better services because they would know what they are entitled to and the resources available to meet their needs, thus reducing the current rampant corruption in the country.
APCNews: What were the main challenges faced during the research process?
LN: The main challenge faced was scheduling meetings with key informants from the executive level of government. Besides having busy schedules (and we, too, had a tight schedule in which to complete the research), we noticed that most senior government officials were reluctant to participate in research. They probably fear being quoted as criticical of government. But also the law forbids civil servants from making public comments without the authority of the accounting officer of a public department. An additional challenge was that many potential respondents thought open government data was something complicated that they were not qualified to comment about. It therefore took quite a bit of explaining to get them ready for interviews. But once the interviews were underway, virtually all respondents mentioned they were aware of OGD, and supported efforts for Uganda to open its government data.
The OGD concept is fairly new and it touches the hearts of all citizens. More time to capture data on a larger proportion of the population especially in rural areas was unfortunately not available. Besides, there is not much available literature on OGD in Africa, hence it was hard to capture success stories on how OGD could benefit or even spur development in Africa.
APCNews: Assessment of citizen’s perceptions on open governance in Uganda revealed that there is a high level of knowledge about open governance in the country, as well as great expectations for the benefits that OGD would bring to Uganda. Which do you think were the factors that helped build acknowledgement of the importance of the OGD?
LN: The compounding factors that led to this acknowledgement amongst respondents and the overall conclusion maybe drawn from the known country cases of open governance from which citizens have learned about the benefits of OGD. Many respondents cited cases where corruption cases were unveiled as a result of government publishing some department and project expenditures. References were continually made to what countries like Kenya are currently doing to promote OGD and the benefits that have resulted, in order to indicate that promoting for OGD in Uganda would lead to similar benefits.
Also, the launch of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) initiative last year, where Uganda was among the six eligible countries to join and yet opted out, was an eye-opener for some citizens who are keen on knowing why Uganda decided not to join the OGP.
APCNews: Uganda was one of the first countries in east and southern Africa to formulate a national ICT policy and an access to information law addressing the openness of government data in one of its objectives but, as the report points out, the legislation on this matter remains largely unimplemented. How do you think this gap between the policy and the legislation could be mitigated?
LN: Massive awareness about the existence of the policy among the public is needed so that people get to know its relevance, how to apply it in their everyday lives and what other information to demand. Besides, there is need to lobby and create awareness among legislators and public officials on the need to implement these policies. A good way to lobby would be to showcase how openness has led, or can lead, to public good without hurting the interests of any stakeholder groups, be it government departments, public servants, the private sector or citizens groups. There would also be a need to update legislation (such as the ICT policy and the Access to Information law) to make them more explicitly and progressively supportive of OGD.
APCNews: The study Open government data readiness study in Uganda concludes that Uganda is ready to implement OGD with appropriate support and guidance. What does this support and guidance imply in terms of advocacy? Which actors should be involved on this implementation, according to the knowledge gained during the research and what are the expected inputs from each one of the actors involved?
LN: To some extent, the government of Uganda is practicing some sort of openness but it is facing challenges in sustaining the platforms on which such data should be accessed. Moreover, most of the available data is not in a reusable format. Thus in terms of advocacy, there is a need to point to government areas that require more readily available data. As pointed out by most respondents, more openness is needed in areas such as government spending in health, education, water and energy sectors. Also, government needs to spend more time developing and supporting applications that assist in hosting the data in readily accessible formats. Actors such as citizens, academia, private sector and civil society need to be more involved in the implementation of open governance as each stakeholder has a complementary role to play. The citizenry must continuously demonstrate their need for the data by demanding it. The private sector, on the other hand, needs to design and develop applications that will make open data readily available in easy-to-use formats and also make innovations based on OGD. Civil society has to continuously create awareness about the need for this data among communities while stressing the importance of the free flow of information among government and the public.
This research was developed in the context of APC’s Action Research Network, a project supported by the International Development Research Centre of Canada (IDRC).
This article was published by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) News on May 30, 2012

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