According to participants at a regional e-government forum in Nairobi recently, lack of funding has slowed down the adoption of e-government in the region, with local authorities most hit.
In a statement, the stakeholders drawn from the five East African Community partner states of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi said that while the EAC had succeeded in creating policies and strategies to guide the rollout of a “ubiquitous” e-government, not much had been achieved due to lack of finances.
“We commend the EAC’s vision for e-government and its role in both articulating the national priority areas and in supporting e-government. We would love to deliver services directly to citizens interactively through short messaging services offered through mobile phones,” said the statement.
“We see information access centres, resource centres and information kiosks as important prerequisites for improving the lives and livelihoods of people in the region. But we need adequate funding to reach this goal,” the statement added, noting that there is a need for a special fund to support e-government efforts at the regional, national and local levels.
However, the participants did not say how they would engage EAC governments to have the fund set up. It was recommended that the EAC secretariat source funds for the implementation of the resolutions of the forum.
The meeting identified the areas that need immediate attention as systems integration, e-procurement, infrastructure development and equipment upgrade and realignment of the legal regulatory framework to deal with an e-environment and e-governance.
According to information and communications technology experts, other factors hindering the development of e-government in local authorities in the region include research and data gaps, absence of policies and strategies for guiding e-government at the local levels in local authorities, lack of awareness, inadequate human resources and lack of strategic alliances and partnerships to improve and assure operational and responsive e-government.
In a raft of recommendations, the Nairobi meeting asked the EAC secretariat to fundraise for e-government projects, support the formulation of a regional framework for e-government at local authority levels as well as establish a regional working group for articulating the regional framework and processes for implementing e-government at local authority levels.
The meeting also recommended that the EAC partner states urgently form “independent” ministries or regulatory bodies to deal exclusively with ICT development and e-government projects and reform the legal system to cater for the control and regulation of e-government, provide favourable economic environment for “multistakeholder partnerships.”
The states are also supposed to allocate resources in national budgets to cater for e-government and form national working groups to establish and refine e-government needs at the national and local levels.
The private sector in the region is seen as being useful in providing technical assistance and training as well relevant technological solutions to governments. And apart from the fact that they can finance e-government initiatives, they are expected to provide affordable, reliable as eell as relevant technologies to support e-government services such as e-banking.
During the meeting, it was agreed that local authorities budget for the implementation of e-government projects in their jurisdictions, create awareness on the need for e-government in all local authorities, harmonise their information systems to provide and popularise e-services, invest in the necessary infrastructure such as local area networks and wide area networks as well as conduct e-readiness surveys.
The East African Local Government Associations, which organised the forum in conjunction with the EAC, were challenged to lobby for e-government in the EAC and provide oversight for implementing e-government at local levels.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Fracis Ayieko
Quelle/Source: The East African, 26.11.2007
