Assessing Uganda’s Open Government Data Readiness

The Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) is undertaking a study to establish Uganda’s Open Government Data readiness. The study, which will form the basis of advocacy, awareness raising, and network building activities, is gauging political willingness, public administration readiness, and civil society interest and readiness.
We are also assessing citizens’ perceptions on open governance. Please see http://apc.org/cipesa-opendata-survey for the online survey. For details about the assessment, email [email protected].
 
 

Uganda: The Challenge of Accessing Public Information

The inhabitants of Bushenyi District in Uganda have seen their right to access in­formation blatantly violated by public bodies; reflecting the plight of thousands of ordinary citizens who wish to hold their leaders account­able.
Unusual and suspicious delays in the execution of a contract to build a new sta­dium in the District of Bushenyi amid rumours that the District had issued certificates against which payments were made when work had not been done prompted this community led by Civil Society Forum, a local NGO, on Decem­ber 8, 2009 to demonstrate and file a series of requests for access to documents related to the contract.
The first request was made to Dis­trict Local Governments with copies to the Resident District Commissioner, the President’s representative at district level whose duty is, amongst others, to monitor government pro­grammes on the President’s behalf.
With a mute response from local au­thorities, the residents again led by Civil Soci­ety Forum brought the matter to the attention of the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit of the Office of the Prime Minister as well as the De­partment of Ethics and Integrity, Office of the President in December 2010. Still these efforts did not help citizens get the documents or the contract executed as required.
The contract entailed improving and constructing a stadium in the district at the cost of 906 million Ugandan Shillings (about $ 377 500). It was awarded in 2005 to HABA Construction Company, an entity owned by Mr. Hassan Bassajabalaba, a member of the NRM Central Executive Committee, the ruling party’s top policy organ.
Facing these huge obstacles to enjoy­ing their constitutional right to information, this community had to seek external help. The Human Rights Network of Uganda (HURINET) stepped in and joined the CSO Forum to take the matter to court in the beginning of 2011. On the scheduled date of the hearing, HURI­NET lawyers were ready and attended court but hearing did not take place because the Chief Magistrate was reportedly sick.
In a letter dated 10th May 2011 (but received in July 2011) the District finally yield­ed to pressure and responded by providing ,among others, the architectural plan of the stadium, the four certificates of completion, contract agreement with bills of quantities and evidence of payments made. According to these documents, the contractor did not only receive the contracted sum but also took the Local Government to Court and won an addi­tional 40 million Ugandan Shillings (about $16 667) for breach of contract yet very little work had been done. Following the filing of the case in court by CSOs the District Local Government contracted another company Rose ST to com­plete the works.
These developments may be a vic­tory for access to information, but they also confirm how far mindsets in public institutions need to change from secrecy to openness to ensure effective enforcement of Uganda’s ac­cess to information legislation.
Concerns similar to that of Bushenyi were the basis for information requests made by Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC) to the Uganda Land Commission, Ministry of Education and Sports as well as the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development. All the three public bodies have refused ac­cess and have never reported to Parliament on information requests received in compliance with Section 43 of the Access to Information Act.
It is not clear why the Auditor Gen­eral has never raised questions. There is also no information as to why the Resident District Commissioner, the Office of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Ethics and Integrity did not act on the reports by the Western Civil Society Forum. It remains to be seen if the Inspector General of Government will take interest in the matter now that records have been made avail­able and clearly something went wrong some­where.
Republished with the kind permission of AFIC.

How ICT Could Drive Open Government in Africa

By CIPESA Writer
Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) could be a key enabler of open government in Africa, in the wake of the September 20, 2011 launch of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a multilateral initiative that aims “to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technolo¬gies to strengthen governance”.
The African countries currently eligible to join the OGP are Kenya, Liberia, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda – and of them, by September 20, 2011, only Tanzania and Uganda had not indicated their plans to join the OGP. These countries derived their eligibility from their “demonstrated commitment to open government” in the key areas of budget transparency, access to infor¬mation, asset disclosure by politicians and officials, and citizen engagement.
An increasingly large number of people in Africa are accessing modern communication technologies such as the internet and mobile phones. Indeed, at the citizen-to-citizen level, a lot of conversations and actions are taking place via ICT. Many of these ICT-enabled interactions and discussions are empowering citizens, enhancing civic agency and promoting participation in various ways which democratic governments need to nurture.
In East Africa, more so in Kenya and Uganda, social media are hugely popular, and have been proved to be a great mobilising tool which open government promoters should promptly embrace. More generally, given the central role ICT can play in enabling the attainment of the key objectives of open government, Africa needs to enable more of its people to access mobile phones and the internet. And governments must take a lead in using ICT to improve openness, while also supporting civil society ICT-for-Open-Government initiatives.
Such initiatives, among others, include the Africa4All parliamentary initiative operational in Lesotho, Namibia, Tanzania and Uganda, which leverages on web 2.0 technolo¬gies to support collaboration and active engagement of MPs and citizens in the decision making process, and the East Africa ICT4Democracy programme that is working in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
Corruption, poor service delivery and undemocratic governance survive on systems that keep information hidden from the public, and bureaucracies which place near-unfettered power into the hands of the few public officials that control this information. Becoming open would require the currently closed African governments to briskly get online in service provision and in pro-actively placing a wide array of information in the public domain.
Moreover, citizens need to be empowered to hold their leaders and public service institutions to account. The countries which have taken a lead in this area recognise that freedom of information represents the citizens’ right to know; and that access to government information enhances public participation, while also enabling more robust scrutiny and discussion of government actions.
For Africa, passing and effecting progressive legislation that guarantees access to information is crucial. So is the need for public bodies to enter and respect citizens’ charters. Besides, concerted efforts to create civic awareness and to enable citizens’ active partici¬pation in fighting corruption and monitoring democracy will be crucial. And smartly embracing ICT would catalyse all these efforts.
Read CIPESA’s September 2011 Briefing on Open Government in Africa, here.

Enabling Open Access ICT Infrastructure Through Universal Access

Introduction
In view of the ongoing debates about how to reduce bandwidth costs in Africa, and discussions about how the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) should be managed, APC is supporting the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) to develop a series of papers that discuss issues concerning Open Access fibre optic systems and how they can benefit from Universal Access programmes in Africa.
Among other things, this paper:
1)    Addresses the factors that inform Universal Access in Africa;
2)    Makes the case for Open Access infrastructure in addressing the continent’s connectivity headaches;
3)    Examines the flaws that are common in African connectivity programmes, including the shortage of useful content and the failure to create sustainable demand for service;
4)    Presents the case of the Ugandan and Kenyan rural access programmes and scrutinises areas that may fail their Universal Service aspirations; and
5)    Concludes that regional infrastructure undertakings like EASSy require Universal Access to be correctly implemented and to address demand in order for Open Access principles to prevail.
Several African countries have adopted Universal Access principles as part of their efforts to extend modern communication services to disadvantaged areas. The thinking is that Universal Access will help bridge the digital divide within countries, whereby urban areas tend to have better and often more affordable connectivity compared to rural/disadvantaged areas.
Increasingly, the principle of Open Access is also gaining currency for similar reasons: countries seek to lower the cost of extending connectivity and enhance the affordability of ICT services. Some countries are embracing Open Access not only for regional infrastructure backbones, but also promulgating it for national ICT infrastructure.
This paper questions whether Open Access will bear much fruit if Universal Access does not significantly go beyond the mere provision of connectivity, to creating effective demand.
Why Universal Access
Universal Access entails access by all to quality communication services like telephony or the Internet at affordable prices and reasonable distances. In Botswana’s, the definition seems more comprehensive than in most African countries. Its National ICT policy defines Universal Access as “[t]he provision of affordable, reliable, simple to operate, advanced capabilities for new telecommunications and information services, so that they are either available or easily accessible to everyone, with due regard to people with special needs”.
Overall, African Internet penetration is very low at only 2.6 per 100 inhabitants. Comparative figures for Europe are 31.2%, the Americas (north and south) 28.2%, and Asia 8.1%. But even within Africa, penetration levels tend to be lower in some of the East and Southern African countries (as shown in the graph below), where the lack of a link to the international fibre optic system makes connectivity more costly.
Interventions (mainly public sector) are therefore necessary to extend services to regions that are rural, poor, or difficult to connect due to geographical complexities, as they often lag behind in access to ICT. As it is, Universal Access implies having a telephony/Internet access facility within walkable distance for all, but does not necessarily imply that people have the means to use and maximise the benefit of the technology. Issues such as the ability to pay for the service, skills in using the service, and appropriate content, may hinder a person from maximizing the benefit of the ICT services, yet they are often ignored by Universal Service programmes.
Case for Open Access
As can be seen from the illustration above, only a tiny fraction of Africa has access to the Internet. The shortage of infrastructure and the high cost of connectivity are key contributing factors. The advent of fibre optic bandwidth will potentially make it affordable to connect thousands of more users. But if the cable is run along a consortium format, it is likely that the price for connecting will be kept artificially high, resulting in much of the bandwidth available on cables like EASSy staying redundant. This is why Open Access should result in more people accessing ICT services. Open Access requires that owners of assets that are thought to be unique/ costly/ wasteful to duplicate, make them available to others at a competitive price. This mainly applies to what are deemed to be national infrastructural assets. EASSy is probably the best-known African project to adopt Open Access principles, but others like the COMESA Telecommunications Company (COMTEL) are following suit. Countries where exclusivity periods for telecos are ending are requiring all infrastructure providers to allow access to their resources at competitive prices so that the new entrants are not disadvantaged vis-à-vis the existing infrastructure owners. In fact, COMESA at large and the East African Community have endorsed the Open Access principles for ICT infrastructure, though they have not effectively implemented them. Open Access in a way shares the vision of Universal Access since it sees the challenge as being able to extend communications to those at the bottom of the income pyramid by lowering the cost of services. In this sense, Open Access can be viewed as an enabler of Universal Access. Open access encourages small operators, including those that operate in limited geographical areas, to enter the market and service also ‘last mile’ connectivity.
Rural and ‘last mile’ connectivity are crucial in Africa. Because African connectivity is extremely low compared to other parts of the world, connectivity in more deprived parts of the continent is unlikely to be effected by private sector operators whose motives are purely commercial. A person in a high-income country is over 22 times more likely to be an Internet user than someone in a low-income country. And in high-income countries, mobile phones are 29 times more prevalent, and mainline penetration is 21 times that of low-income countries (UNCTAD 2006). Relative to income, the cost of Internet access in a low-income country is 150 times the cost of a comparable service in a high-income country. The disparities in access to ICT are huge in most of Africa, which creates a need for improving ICT connectivity, access and usage. Both Universal Access and Open Access respond to this need.
It is generally agreed that access to reliable and affordable ICT can help to positively transform the lives of those who own them and use them effectively. ICT can be an enabler of development, as they can reward those who use them well with increased income and a better quality of life. Conversely, those who do not use them are left behind, and ICT disparities often tend to worsen the existing inequalities.

Flaws in African Universal Access programmes

Several African countries have set up universal service funds in their national ICT policies. But it is becoming evident that the definition of Universal Access and the implementation of Universal Access programmes in much of Africa tend to be flawed. In most cases, the designation of Universal Access does not go beyond taking connectivity to rural areas. But as will be argued below, for the majority of rural Africans to access and effectively use ICT, more than connectivity is needed: Relevant (including local and adapted) content, building capacity for people to be able to use the ICTs, and for communities to maintain the ‘equipment’, are crucial too. So are access to reliable and affordable electricity to power the connectivity, the use of appropriate technology for the connection, and connectivity services that are sustainable. These are what will create effective demand that will feed Open Access and make it a success.
Content
While some schools of thought hold that the lack of electricity is a leading impediment to the success of Universal Access programmes in Africa, we feel content is a much more fundamental problem. Most of the Universal Access programmes are implemented in rural areas that do not have power, so in cases like Uganda’s Rural Access Programmes, diesel-powered generators are part of the package extended to such initiatives. Like electricity, the development of local content is one of the paramount prerequisites for Africa’s effective uptake of the Internet and associated services. But at the moment, African-generated content is only a tiny fraction of the online content. This means that what is available on the Internet (and associated mediums) is not always relevant to Africans. Without appropriate content, Africa cannot fundamentally boost usage of ICT in disadvantaged areas.
However, the development of content cannot be achieved without empowering people and organisations in Africa to enable them develop and disseminate their content, including indigenous knowledge. The reality is that few Universal Access programmes in Africa prioritise content generation. In some cases where content is mentioned in Universal Access policy documents, it is often a peripheral issue that hardly moves beyond the policy documents to actual implementation.
This could also explain the challenges telecentres in Africa have faced, which have made only a handful of them successful. Quite often they have failed to address critical issues such as the requirements of the beneficiary communities. There tends to be a general assumption that technology brings development and everybody should know this, including rural communities. A telecentre is then dumped in the community whose needs are not well ascertained, and which is unable to use the service. That is a recipe for failure.
The case of CELAC (Collecting and Exchange of Local Agricultural Content, www.celac.or.ug) in Uganda is an instructive one in best practice. It collects local indigenous knowledge from the communities, processes it, and exchanges it between communities in different parts of the country. This is content people can easily associate with, and are comfortable working with. Additionally, CELAC has demonstration gardens where it ‘practices what it preaches’. The farming community then finds it easier to appreciate the practical relevance to improving their livelihoods of the information available at the CELAC resource centre.
Demand
Without a doubt, demand for information carried by modern communication channels exists in rural and under-served Africa. And this demand should rise as new technologies allow for a decrease in costs of bandwidth and of telephony connectivity generally. The telecom operators that are in the consortium that has promoted EASSy over the years, are perceived to want closed control over the cable’s bandwidth so that they can charge for it as they wish. But it is also conceivable that they want the consortium model because demand is not easily predictable, and they need to be in charge of servicing that uncertain demand.
But while the completion of EASSy would obviously result in a possibility for users to get top-grade bandwidth at significantly lower prices, there is no guarantee that under a consortium this will be the case. What is more likely to happen is that the individuals and organisations that already have Internet connectivity, in predominantly urban areas, will upgrade their connectivity; few additional connections outside the currently connected circuits would be made under an arrangement other than Open Access. In turn, by enabling operators, even small ones, to hook onto the cable, and making it possible for them to operate in less-served areas, Open Access would boost demand for Internet services.
The telecentre experience shows that we have to address the demand side at the same time as we address the supply constraint. Creating content that is relevant for education or health, and making communities aware of the uses of ICTs, are ways of generating demand. This why development agencies that support ICT for Development programmes need to ensure that these programmes create requisite demand on a sustainable basis.
Uganda’s Rural Access Fund
In 2001, Uganda set up the Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF), one of the very first on the continent, to “enable the establishment of an appropriate infrastructure that supports ICT development and at the same time achieves Universal Access in Uganda.” The primary objective was to ensure that basic communication services of acceptable quality were accessible, at affordable prices, and at reasonable distances, by all people. The fund would primarily be used to assist in areas where the provision of commercial services was not feasible, and would be accessed through some form of competition by operators. The initial proposed prioritisation was support for the establishment of access to basic ICT services in sub-counties, which are un-served; support for the introduction of Internet Points of Presence (PoP) in every district headquarters; the promotion of ICT capacity (training, management and maintenance of services established at vanguard institutions); the promotion of content creation; and the establishment of a domestic Internet Exchange Point (IXP).
While the RCDF has funded the establishment of Internet PoPs and the setting up of community access points, with power supply highly erratic (and costly), the centres are often inoperational. Critics say a lack of effective capacity building for operators and beneficiaries of these centres, coupled with a lack of sufficient local and adapted content, also detract from the usefulness of the facilities. At another level, how to sustain these operations beyond the RCDF subsidies has not been properly worked out, which casts doubt on whether this initiative is sustainable in its present format.
Kenya’s Rural Development Fund
In Kenya, telecom operators have opposed the establishment of a special Universal Service Fund (USF) for developing communication infrastructure and services in rural and under-served areas. The USF was to be financed through a tax charged on mobile phone airtime. Telecom operators argue that the fund would inflate the cost of airtime and prevent full use of the emerging mobile phone service. The proposal is for telecom companies, both mobile and landline providers, to contribute 1% of their gross annual revenue to the fund. But operators argue that USF would instead threaten to reduce penetration, as it will increase total levies charged on mobile phone usage to 28% from the current 27%. Celtel has argued that in the past it had connected areas not served by any means of communication, and that telecom companies do not need government prodding to move to these areas. It argues that rather than asking phone companies to contribute 1% of their gross revenue to the fund, government should identify areas it wants to cover, then tell them to use that 1% to cover these areas. The operators’ argument is that the USF by itself cannot create the necessary conditions for running a sustainable service in the areas where government envisages intervening. By extension, it can be posited that Open Access would not be feasible in such areas, unless Universal Access interventions helped create demand in such regions.
Conclusion
Universal Access is designed to take connectivity to areas where it is lacking and is not likely to be made available by commercial operators. While it should ideally develop both infrastructure and content, usually funding for appropriate content is disregarded. Equipment often breaks down and there are no maintenance support facilities; while low levels of literacy also mean that even when services are extended to some rural areas, they will not be useful to many members of the community – unless they are given training. A distinction is often made about ‘necessary conditions’ (which entail bringing the relevant ICT infrastructure to a community, including carriage facilities that store, service or carry information, the actual devices that the people use and the tools to operate); and ‘sufficient conditions’, which refer to conditions that yield maximum usage and benefit of ICT. That is, communities should have the skill to take full advantage of ICT, be able to afford to pay for services, and appropriate content has to be made available. It can be argued then that universal access programmes in Africa may have taken noteworthy strides in the direction of the necessary conditions for Universal Access, but they are far from embarking on the sufficient conditions for Universal Access. Open Access is a means of enabling Universal Access; though, conversely, a comprehensive and well-implemented Universal Access programme is also an aid to the successful operation of an Open Access model.  – With www.fibreforafrica.net 

Access to Information in Uganda: Practice Should Match Policy

By Wairagala Wakabi – CIPESA Research Associate
This paper investigates the Uganda Government’s policies and practice with regard to citizens’ access to public domain information. In a nutshell, whereas the policy environment is largely favourable, the practice greatly hampers actual access to the public domain information.
Over the last few years, the Uganda Government has placed increasing attention to ICT, creating a policy environment that is largely favourable to ICT service provision and proliferation. In 2003, Uganda adopted a national ICT policy, a draft revision of which was finalised by the Ministry of ICT in August 2008.
The formation of this ministry in 2006 offered recognition to ICT as a fully fledged sector, and was expected to catalyse the uptake of ICT in the country. But the country has not done equally well in the area of raising the public’s access to governmental information, or in the wider area of promoting e-Government.
One of the objectives of Uganda’s National ICT Policy is “to facilitate the broadest possible access to public domain information.” The policy is designed to support the attainment of this objective through several strategies, including conducting research to establish citizens’ information needs and the barriers to information use, and developing measures to overcome these barriers; and increasing accessibility to government information and ensuring uniform practices in its distribution.
The other strategies stipulated in the policy are utilising the local administrative council system to facilitate the flow of information from the grassroots to the centre and the other way round; and initiating an e-government programme to digitise public domain information and make it available through Internet websites, public library systems and other appropriate dissemination media.
It is now widely accepted that it takes more than infrastructure and technology to create meaningful access to and utilisation of ICT. Accordingly, there is a clear realisation in Uganda’s ICT policy framework that access to information in the public domain and availability of relevant and usable content constitute a critical part of the ICT equation. In this paper, “public domain information” refers to information generated especially by public institutions, which is necessary for members of the public to have in order to function as competent citizens.
Indeed, the thinking in the Uganda ICT policy in this regard is also embodied in the Tunis Agenda on the Information Society adopted in November 2005, which notes that a lot of effort had been spent in Africa on creating ICT enabling infrastructure but little attention has been invested in creating content and making it accessible to the wider public.
The need for greater access to and usage of public domain information is hence seen as a crucial link in empowering citizens and in having ICT meaningfully contributing to development and better governance.
Uganda’s desire to boost access to public domain information is also in line with the resolution adopted in 1997 by a UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) general assembly. That resolution called for action “to facilitate access to information in the public domain with the aim of building up a general electronic repository of all information of a public nature.”
Since then, interest in the role of raising access to and use of public information has grown, and it is widely considered that one of the greatest values associated with placing governmental information in the public domain is transparency of governance and the promotion of democratic ideals (UNESCO 2004; Basu 2004).
According to the UNESCO resolution, “open and unrestricted dissemination of public information also enhances public health and safety, and the general social welfare, as citizens become better able to make informed decisions about their daily life, their environment, and their future”.
It was therefore deemed important to compare Uganda’s policies to the practice as far as encouraging access to public domain information was concerned. In a nutshell, it was found that there was a wide mismatch between the policies and the practice.
Around the world, the Australian Government is among those who have taken the lead in recognising the need for greater openness and transparency. In a guide to reforms on the Freedom of Information Act of 1992, the Government affirms that freedom of information represents the pinnacle of the citizens’ right to know.
It adds: “Information held by the Government is a national resource and should be managed in the public interest. Access to government information increases public participation, and leads to increased scrutiny, discussion, comment and review of government activity” (Faulkner J. 2009).
Besides being outlined in Uganda’s National ICT Policy, the need to “facilitate the broadest possible access to public domain information” is also articulated in the country’s telecoms sector policy review (UCC 2008).
In another move aimed at giving citizens greater access to information, in 2005 Parliament passed the Access to Information Act. This law was introduced to give effect to the constitutional right to information. The Act sets the time limit in which a citizen should get information from a state agency. But it took 10 years for Parliament to enact this law since the passing of the Constitutional provision on access to information.
In fact, the passing of the law by Parliament followed intense lobbying by civil society organisations. Up to now, however, Uganda’s Government has been reluctant to implement the access to information law, and some observers have referred to it as “a catalogue of exceptions” owing to the many types of information which the law says public officials may not give to citizens.
Uganda’s Government has, however, taken positive steps towards setting up websites of various ministries, parastatals and local bodies. On the downside, in most cases the websites simply offer information related to what the department does or what services it offers; the websites do not in fact offer these services, nor is the information they hold informative enough. A few websites provide user feedback forms, but that often is as far as the interactivity goes.
An audit of governmental websites notes that whereas one of the ultimate goals of e-Government is to provide public services online, the websites analysed were found largely wanting in the content category of online service. It adds: “There would be greater efficiency in the delivery of public services if, for instance, government databases, documents, and applications for all sorts of licenses were available online to be accessed or downloaded by those interested” (Mwesige et al. 2005).” That was not the case for the greater majority of websites studied.
A Government-sanctioned assessment had earlier indicated that “almost all ministries, departments and local governments lack the infrastructure required to deliver anything apart from rudimentary e-Government services” and that this limited efforts to offer information and services to citizens.
The contribution of ICT to a country’s socio-economic development ultimately depends on its value as a knowledge resource. Indeed, the idea of a “knowledge society” has to do with citizens’ competence as users of information in order to improve their economic competitiveness, global connectedness, social awareness, efficiency in managing daily lives, among other things. It could be said therefore that the Uganda Government’s reluctance to act on its policies is undermining its citizens’ empowerment to harness the benefits of the Information Society.
It is widely recognised that increasing public domain information, and facilitating universal and equitable access to that information, is fundamental to human well-being and to addressing the digital divide between the information rich and the information poor (Dada, D. 2006). Despite the current state of limited access to and use of public domain information, new legislation and policies such as the access to information law and the national ICT policy have given legal recognition to the citizens’ need for and right to demand access to information in the public domain.
Basu (2004) argues that for e-Government to work in Africa, governments should be willing to decentralise responsibilities and processes, and to start using electronic means of communicating and delivering services. Citizens could then contact their leaders and public servants through website where all forms, legislation, news and other information is made available. In effect, governments would serve their citizens better and save costs by making internal operations more efficient, cutting down the complex and over-stretched bureaucratic system (Heeks R. 2006; Gronlund, A. 2007).
Uganda is currently in the process of revising its ICT policy and e-Government strategy, and hopefully these will be designed and implemented more robustly to improve citizens’ access to public information. In the meantime, it could be concluded that it requires more than passing policies and regulations for citizens to have better access to information.
References
Basu, S (2004). E-Government and Developing Countries: An Overview, International Review of Law Computers & Technology, 18, 109-132.
Chisenga, J. (2004). Africa Governments in Cyberspace: are they bridging the Content Divide? In: P Birungi and M.G. Musoke. 2004. SCECSAL XV. Towards a Knowledge Society of Africa
Dada, D. (2006). The failure of eGovernment in developing countries: A literature review, The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries, 26, 1, 1-10
Faulkner, J. (2009). Freedom of Information Reform Companion Guide. Queensland: Government of Australia
Gronlund, A. (2007). Electronic Government – what’s in a word? Aspects on definitions and status of the field, The Encyclopaedia of Electronic Government.
Heeks R. (2006). Implementing and managing eGovernment. London: Sage Publications.Mega-Tech Inc. (2006). The national ICT master plan and e-government network feasibility study in Uganda, Kampala: Uganda
Mwesige, P et al. (2004). Redressing the digital divide: a critical profile of Uganda’s Internet and ICT usage. Kampala: Uganda Communications Commission.
Onyango, O (2006).  The Limits of Free Expression under Museveni. Kampala: Monitor Publications.
UCC (2004). Uganda National ICT Policy. Kampala: Uganda Communications Comiission
UCC (2008). Recommendations on proposed review of the telecommunications sector policy. Kampala: Uganda Communications Commission
UNESCO (2004). Policy Guidelines for the Development and promotion of Governmental public Domain Information. Paris: UNESCO.