However the latter is not happening as it should be, according to Uganda's ICT Minister Dr Ham-Mukasa Mulira (pictured)and that realisation is partly the centre of intense deliberations by the ongoing e-Governance Forum on how citizens can be primed to effectively utilise ICT tools.
"We certainly need to focus on effective change management otherwise it's wasted effort and resources if we put up all these ICT facilities and our people cannot apply them in their day to day business," he said.
Held annually, the e-Governance Forum is organised by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, CTO and it brings together government ICT policy managers and architects, international regulators like the ITU, private sector experts, ICT researchers and academics.
Dr Mulira, who delivered a paper on Uganda's e-governance policy and objectives offered as the beacon of the country's ICT advance, the national fibre optic backbone whose first phase has already been completed.
Financed with a loan from the Chinese government, the project will see the physical government (ministries, departments, commissions, Authorities, districts) connected by a fibre cable to facilitate fast flow of voice, data and provide communication around it. Currently all the ministries in Kampala, the Defence headquarters at Bombo, Jinja and the State House in Entebbe have been connected.
Dr Mulira said debates and discussions would seek to further understand how government can use ICTs to offer public services to citizens.
"While we have put these facilities in place, the government will have to go and help ministries on how to use them. When we installed screens in these ministries for video conferencing for instance, people didn't even know they had to switch them on for them to work," he said.
CTO's Chief Executive Officer, Mr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah said Uganda was far ahead of many of its peers in extending essential ICTs to rural areas along the principle of universal access.
"Within the Commonwealth, many people have recognised Uganda's success in bringing communications facilities to poor people in far flung places as a model that can be adopted by other countries," he said.
Under the Rural Communications Development Fund, RCDF which is principally financed by contributions from telecom companies, the Uganda Communications Commission has established more than a 1000 telephony points in areas that are underserved by private operators. Dozens of telecentres and ICT training centres have also been erected.
Some delegates appealed to the CTO to help prevail on international satellite operators to cutback on the sky-high bandwidth tariffs so internet can be affordable to the masses in Uganda and other African countries. Uganda and several other sub-Saharan African nations use satellite to transmit all of their international digital traffic, which costs them lots of money.
According to Mr Ekwow though not much can be done other than expediting the construction of the sea based cables such that these nations can start to use marine fibre to connect to the world.
There are three cable projects whose development is underway-EASSy (private sector), TEAMS (Kenyan government) and UHURUNET which is being jointly undertaken by regional governments. EASSy is the most advanced of all these.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Elias Biryabarema
Quelle/Source: AllAfrica, 06.03.2008
