By Kabuye Ronald
A new study conducted by the Africa Freedom and Information Centre (AFIC) on government procurement in Digital Technology System (DTS) in Uganda between February and July 2021 has revealed that 99% of the money budgeted to procure government Digital Technology Systems is undisclosed leaving only 1% disclosed between 2015 to 2021 financial years.
According to the report, 3.3 trillion shillings was budgeted for the procurement of government ICT and DTS however only 197 billion is what is disclosed to the public since it’s the only funds that its contracts can be accessed on the government procurement portal which is about 1% of the budgeted money.
The study revealed that the most procured DTS are majorly from China, United Kingdom and German which mostly include: Biometric Machine, CCTV cameras, access control systems, facial recognition systems, Spam malware, application programs interface, media monitoring systems, central monitoring systems, the DNA equipment, Biometric Voter Verification kit, drones and the phone monitoring system. Which are majorly procured through direct or non-competitive procurement since they mostly classified with 62% done through request for quotations and 13.5% done directly while just 9% is done through open domestic bidding.
The report indicates that government procures the above DTS for human resource management, surveillance, safety and security, Traffic management control, information and data management, election management, financial management, health management, research and data analysis, management of procurement, E governance and Citizens identification management.
The biggest purchaser of the DTS is electoral commission of all government entities, using most of the money to procure Biometric machines at 71 billion and the tender is only given to one supplier called “Smartmatic” that’s according to the 1% of the disclosed information of the budget for DTS in a period of six years.
The study also revealed that 71% of the contracts are awarded to locally owned companies however the mystery is that the remaining 29% of the foreign companies are getting the biggest sum of the money at 95% with SmartMatic being the biggest supplier of all while local companies only get 5% of the budget.
The report further revealed that 5.3% of the DTS procurement contracts go over the budget meaning that they seek for supplementary before concluding the procurement. This has been attributed to limited internal capacity to evaluate quotations/ bids given the complexity of the fast growing industry, delayed disbursements of funds, limited budgets, inadequate planning and limited evaluation of skills. While the reason given for limited competition and openness in bidding is because most of the procurements are classified.
This report titled “Sunlight in Digital Technology” was launched to the Media by the Executive Director AFIC Gilbert Sendugwa and it recommended for the prioritization of creation of public awareness of the importance of DTS as well as associated risks and mitigation measures.
The reports wants the Uganda government to publish DTS procurement data, in open formats on procurement portals to promote transparency and accountability in the procurement of DTS, providing of timely feedback whenever citizens file requests for information on procurement and deployment of DTS to different government MDAs. And also promote open bidding in procurement for DTS in order to promote value for money in tendering of DTS as well as innovation.
The report also recommends that respective national human rights institutions of Uganda should prioritize promotion of human rights in the context of DTS starting with documenting and publishing reports on the state of surveillance in respective countries since most of the DTS are used for illegal surveillance of opposition politicians, journalists, civil society leaders among others.
It further called for government to mainstream local private sector involvement in the procurement of DTS in the country in order to improve the participation of local private sector in supply of DTS.
