By Kabuye Ronald
Evidence and Methods Lab, a civic technology initiative working in the areas of access to information, accountability has launched a two year study on the utilization of the internet in service delivery and fostering transparency and accountability in ministries, government departments and agencies.
Speaking during the launch of the project in Kampala, Michael Richard Katagaya, the team Leader at Evidence and Methods Lab said the two year project will identify the key stakeholders and what they are doing currently in terms of using internet for service provision, the challenges, loopholes and how this can be improved.
“We shall go to government institutions to see how they are using internet to provide services, the challenges they face, the loopholes and the ways we can improve this. We don’t see why a person needs to physically go to police to report a case yet it can be done via the use of the internet. If the service is put on internet, one can easily lodge in a case, follow up to see where investigations have reached but also can be summoned to appear in court to testify and all this can be done via the internet. This way, even people who are very far from police stations and those who can’t afford transport can be served well but also do away with corruption,”Katagaya said.
He however noted that whereas government has good intentions in using internet to provide service delivery, some officials exploit loopholes for their own benefit to frustrate the use of internet.
“Some government officials deliberately frustrate digitization because the manual processes ensure they thrive on corruption. These know that the use of internet and digitization of services exposes their weakness in service delivery. For example if in the lands office processes are done via the internet, human interaction is done away with and the middlemen would be kicked out and hence losing out. The officials who benefit from this racket would therefore frustrate the system,”Katagaya said.
Katagaya says with this study, they want to show government and the public that there is an opportunity to improved service delivery and accountability using the internet. Adding that the study will lure government to scale up the use of internet and digitization to improve services to the citizens.
Edgar Kuhimbisa, a technical lead in charge of e-justice and digital transformation in the Ministry of Justice said that the study would help inform government decision in regards the use of internet to improve service delivery.
He however noted that standardizing the data ecosystem is still missing but noted government is working on solving the issue.
“We are trying to make sure we capture once and use as many times. In the foreseeable future we are going to eliminate the digital silos where everyone keeps the same kind of information. We will have an integrated government digital ecosystem that wherever you go, either to the bank, processing land title, processing driver’s licence or the passport, there is no need of you moving around with national identity card because it is already captured and can reuse it for government e-services platform.”Kuhimbisa said.
