PILOT PROJECT ON VILLAGE E-GOVERNANCE IN TANZANIA
Contents:
1.
Project Background and Objectives
2.
Project Environment: Structure, Ownership and Sustainability
3.
Project Training Activities
4.
Infrastructure and Applications
5.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Attachments: Training Course material
Trainees feedback
1. PROJECT BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Unesco has contracted the Commonwealth Network of I.T. for Development
(COMNET-IT) to commission two computer installations in two Tanzanian
villages for purposes of enhancing local governance and, indirectly, catalysing
community development. The project was executed in partnership with the
Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) as implementing
partners.
Basic applications for improved governance have been identified. They include:
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Demographic Information (household registers)
Education Statistics
Health Information
Agriculture Information
Basic e-mail service for administrative communication
These constituted the primary project objective. It was also envisaged that, given
initial consolidation, the infrastructure could be used to:
a) provide access to information, primarily to leverage the work of local
functionaries involved in Health, Agriculture and Education (e.g. CDbased material on crops and pesticides, HIV/AIDS-management, etc)
b) provide services to the community by way of text-preparation, printing and
e-mail, for a modest charge.
Another objective of this pilot project is to assess how the progress in
governance-development at village-level might relate to the Multipurpose
Community Telecentre approach, implemented at distinct level in Tanzania
with an initial site at Sengerema (funded by the ITU, IDRC and UNESCO).
Conceptually, the two types of approach are seen as having a complementarity
that may be mutually reinforcing in the long run. The mere provision of
infrastructure, whilst a vital building-block for development, will not in itself
change the way of life for the grass-roots. Improved governance, development
of content, access to information and considerable effort on the part of field
workers and NGOs to sensitise citizens to the benefits and opportunities are
rather more fundamental and will play a catalytic role in generating a pay back
on infrastructure investments. At this pilot stage, COSTECH is offering its
ISP service and other technical facilitation as an interim expedient. In time,
individual villages may wish to migrate to district telecentres as an ISP
solution; the commercial option might also exist. Also, the successful and ongoing installations at village-level will foster the demand for Telecentre-based
services. Indeed, over time, some of these village centres might themselves
assume the role of village-telecentres.
2. PROJECT ENVIRONMENT:
SUSTAINABILITY.
STRUCTURE,
OWNERSHIP
AND
Following Government restructuring,
Tanzania has adopted a two-tier
administrative structure comprising of the Central Government and the Local
Government at distinct level. There are just over one hundred districts and each
consists of a number of villages (the most basic governance level) grouped into
Wards. The Telecentre project at Sengerema services the District, whilst the
present pilot services two basic village units: Lunga Village (in the Lugoba Ward;
Bagamoyo District; this includes eight villages and 16 Wards make up the
district) and Wami village (in Dakawa Ward in Morogoro District).
Lunga is a village made up of around 1,000 families. There is one secondary and
two primary schools and not a single PC in any o these, nor indeed in any of the
families. As in other villages in this Ward, there are two field data collectors and
the Ward maintains and consolidates overall statistics for Health, Education and
Population Distribution. The village has formed an ICT Committee to monitor
and encourage the use of this new facility. One of the trainees who excelled in the
training provided by COSTECH has been nominated to provide support to his
colleagues (on a part-time basis) and he is the link-person with COSTECH's
technical staff.
In Wami, the population of just over 4,000 is served by one Primary School.
Trainees included the Head Teacher and one of his teaching staff, the ruling party
(village) secretary, a local retailer, a youth NGO representative and a water project
officer. In the absence of a suitable building, a container donated by a private
firm in Dar es-Salaam was adopted and refurbished, with power supply and airconditioning installed. As in Lunga, oversight of the use and maintenance of the
installation has been assigned to an ICT Committee and a support person has been
identified to liaise with COSTECH. Typical administrative activities include
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education records
health and agriculture data
collection of water dues and other revenues
(examples:
Water dues of 100 Tanzanian Shillings per person per
month;
100 Tanzanian Shillings per visit to dispensary with
treatment;
200 Tanzanian Shillings daily licence for market space.
90 per cent of revenue goes to the District and the Village retains 10
per cent)
The village of Wami has been selected as the administrative headquarters for a new
district (Mvomero) with effect from July, 2002; it thus has the potential to become
a district telecentre in time.
At time of writing, a number of things remain to be done and some pending issues
need to be resolved but the thoughts around resources and sustainability are along
the following lines:
-
COSTECH ae providing all initial facilitation, including coordination
and support with national and district administrations; they are
providing training, development of a basic set of administrative
applications (to be replicated across villages), initial technical support
and internet service provision (this is not yet in place for any of the
villages). Over recent years, COSTECH has developed significant
core competencies and equipment to catalyse the use of ICT by their
associated agencies (research institutions, etc..).
-
over time, most of these support activities, at least for established
village installations, will migrate to District Telecentres who would
have more of a critical mass to justify ongoing services
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in the interim, villages are working through their ICT monitoring
committee and technical support-person; they are also beginning to
provide services against payment, such as word processing and the
induction of other village functionaries is often being handled by the
local support person;
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locally-generated revenues are intended to help meet the cost of
consumables, whilst the local government has been persuaded to cover
the ongoing electricity bill;
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communications will be met via both land and mobile telephony and
trials for e-mail provision using the latter are in progress.
3. PROJECT TRAINING ACTIVITIES.
Thirty two persons were trained by COSTECH over February to March, 2002, at
their offices in Dar es-Salaam. The topics consisted of:
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Computer Basics and Windows 98
Word Processing using MS-Word
Spreadsheets using MS-Excel
Database Management using Ms-Access
The Internet
The training material constitutes an annex to this report. Also annexed is an
analysis of the responses to a questionnaire submitted at the end of the training.
Apart from interesting feedback on the content, delivery and the meeting of
expectations, the analysis provides interesting insights on delegates' perceptions
of who might benefit from this type of training, what they might be prepared to
pay as an hourly rate for access to a computer, and how future training might be
improved.
4.
INFRASTRUCTURE AND APPLICATIONS.
These are specified below in some detail. For each village, two PCs and one
shared printer have been installed
4.1 Applications
1. Simple databases on:
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Village administrative information such as:
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Household register
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Village ten cell leadership
Education Statistics
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Pupils at school per year
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School dropouts per year
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Causes for school dropouts
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Desks and Building requirements = inventor
Health Statistics
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Immunization information
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Epidemics reports
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Health information from local government
Cooperative and business services
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Agriculture services
2. ICT Training
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ICT awareness and competencies for users, mainly in
office support systems
3. Basic E-mail services
4. Word processing and other possible ICT services to the community,
against a fee
4.2 Equipment Specification & Software
A: Personal Computer Specifications
1. Desk Top
2. Model: IMB / Compaq / DELL
3. Floppy Drive 1.44 MB
4. Processor Intel 800 - 1000 MHz Intel Pentium III / or IV
5. Capacity: 20 GB
6. Memory: 128 MB
7. Modem: 56K Integrated Fax Modem
8. Sound Card
9. External Speakers
10. Network Interface Card:
Integrated Auto - Sensing 10/100 Mbps
Ethernet
11. Display: 15" VGA Colour Monitor
12. Power Supply: 220 - 240 V, 50-60 Hz Auto sense
13. Microsoft Mouse and Mouse Pad
14. 105 key Keyboard
B. Software Specification
1. O/S (Operating System):
15. Microsoft Office 2000.
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Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition
Two PCs for each Village
C. Power Protection Equipment
UPS 1000 VA
D. Communication Facilities
1. Telephone facilities installation/or
2. Wireless equipment (whichever applicable)
E. Cooling system:
Air conditions or Ceiling fans
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One Air Conditioner or Ceiling Fan for each Village
F: Printing Equipment
HP Laser Jet 1100
5.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 There is increasing evidence from developing and emerging economies that the
uptake of ICTs by the community is strongly catalysed by the roll-out of
infrastructure and capacity-building resulting from the process of devolution and
decentralisation being undertaken by progressive governments.
The
consolidation and maturing of local government as an institution, together with
the deployment of infrastructure, not only improves the process of governance,
but also creates an opportunity for improving access for the community and for
sensitising the community to the opportunities. Sometimes in partnership with
the private sector, local government infrastructure is being used to deliver
training and familiarisation activities at local level. Were it not for these
governance improvement programmes, the engagement of society at the grass
roots might not occur at all since private enterprise is often fragmented and
discouraged by the lack of a managed environment and the lack of awareness
concerning the benefits of ICTs. The notion of sensitising the community
through governance-improvement programmes has much to commend it,
particularly if championed by a political visionary and accompanied by a culture
change that perceives the role of government in the information age as an
enabler, catalyst and empowering agent, rather than a watchdog administrator.
5.2 In both the pilot villages, records were kept in a very rudimentary state, often no
more than pencilled lists, offering little or no possibility for reproduction,
dissemination, consistency and so on. It is easy to see that the introduction of
computing tools will instil pride, improve presentation and data quality, enforce
consistency across villages, facilitate data consolidation and timeliness at ward
and district levels, reduce the cost of central statistics gathering, improve
transparency by publishing details of revenues and expenditures, etc.
5.3 After a period of consolidation, the availability of e-mail services will, besides
enhancing administrative activity, offer opportunities to local functionaries and
entrepreneurs. For this and other reasons, it is proposed to produce a concise
update report every two months for the next 6 months on the progress of these
pilot projects.
5.4 Concerning the relevance of these pilot activities to the telecentre project(s) in
Tanzania, the following may be said:
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the telecentre's ongoing development will, as a result of this maturing
activity, be better sensitised to the training needs of the villages it
serves and can act as an aggregator of services
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if the telecentre strategy contemplates replication at village level, these
pilots can constitute a model framework to address issues of
ownership, sustainability, revenue and community involvement in
village telecentres
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the Telecentre is intended to function as an ISP for the district. Over
time, therefore, the villages in that district become important clients
and business-catalysts to the Telecentres. The governance pilot
projects are a powerful tool for the proving of appropriate applications,
technology and methodology in this process.
5.5 Recommendations at this stage may be summarised as follows:
a) COSTECH, equipped with these initial encouraging results and business
model, can seek to secure high-level political support for this activity; a
presentation to Parliament last month was well received;
b) A standard set of basic village administration applications could be
formalised in consultation with the appropriate District and Central
administrations, taking these core initial developments as a basis
c) A documented business model needs to be developed for wider consultation
and funding propositions; COSTECH and COMNET-IT will seek some
financial support to this end
d) having gone so far, in an environment where enthusiasm is the main support
feature, it is worth building on and strengthening these pilot sites to provoke
the interest of other districts and villages in replicating the success and
benefits. Management and development time, rather than infrastructure, is
the key requirement.