The Minister for Communications and Transport, Prof. Mark Mwandosya, made the initiative public last Friday before members of the Parliamentary Infrastructure Committee in Dar es Salaam. “In the mid 1990s, the public service initiated a series of measures in order to become more efficient, effective and customer-oriented. These efforts have put in place the foundations of an e-government.
I would like to take this opportunity to announce that the Cabinet recently has endorsed the e-government initiative,” announced Prof. Mwandosya.
Prof. Mwandosya was addressing PIC members at a workshop convened to establish Tanzania Parliamentary Network for ICT for Development (ParlNet ICT D Tanzania) simply dubbed BungeNet.
Making reference to the National ICT Policy, he said Tanzania has a vision to become a hub of ICT infrastructure and ICT solutions that enhance sustainable socio-economic development and accelerated poverty reduction, both nationally and globally.
He noted that the policy also outlines the country’s mission to enhance nation-wide economic growth and social progress by encouraging beneficial ICT activities in all sectors.
Giving details of the initiative, he explained that the e-government, to be co-ordinated by the Public Service Department, would enabled the government to collect and hold vast amounts of locally relevant information.
The information could be “converted to electronic media for better presentation and cheaper accessibility by the public,” elaborated Prof. Mwandosya.
He jotted down the information to be collected under the e-government initiative as, legislation, regulations, procedures, forms, maps, research papers and numerous statistics, which could be sold or shared free of charge.
He added that government’s own policy-making, monitoring and decision-support process would be greatly enhanced as access to authoritative, timely and accurate data would become more widespread.
According to Prof. Mwandosya, the above process and initiative in general would enhance knowledge sharing within the public service.
He said the e-Public would help increase the productivity of both the public and private sectors by achieving the government’s intention to be a model user of ICT.
Regarding progress of the development of ICT in the country, Prof. Mwandosya unveiled that Tanzania’s tele-density was still low.
Giving statistics, he said the country still experiences poor ratios as regards provision of telecommunication services to a large section of its population.
According to Prof. Mwandosya the number of fixed and mobile phone lines currently stand at 12 telephone lines per 1,000 people (equivalent to a tele-density of 1.2), while that of mobile phone subscribers was only 81 per 10,000 inhabitants.
However, he noted that Dar es Salaam has 5 fixed lines and 10 mobile phone subscribers per 100 people. “The coverage of the network infrastructure is limited to urban areas,” the minister said. Lack of telecommunication and other infrastructure in the rural areas remains a basic impediment to the expansion of ICT services, he said.
Prof. Mwandosya expressed before Parliamentarians government commitment to push for more strides in the ICT and said the current average tele-density, which stands at 2 per cent would be increased to 6 per cent, as the National ICT policy indicates.
On the education sector, he noted that Tanzania is among nations on the continent with insufficient numbers of skilled and experienced experts in ICT and in other professions that rely on the technology.
He therefore suggested: “Hard choices must be made between importing needed skills, or slowly nurturing them within the country. Other choices are needed on the priorities of realigning format education and vocational training to meet the needs of the labour markets.”
According to the BungeNet initiative in charge, Dr Batilda Burian, the two-day workshop for PIC members, was also attended by the President of Pan-African Assembly, Ambassador Getrude Mongela and Speakers, Deputy-Speakers and Parliamentarians from a number of African countries.
Quelle: IPPMedia, 31.05.2004
