Open Development Landscape in Uganda

Uganda Open Development Stakeholders Workshop, Hotel Africana

11th - 12th September 2012

What is Open Development?Set of initiatives to speedup positive change through “open” information-networked activities in national development.

Development” is improvement, progress, aligned to technological advances and targeted at economic growth for alleviating poverty. Focuses on the effectiveness and legitimacy of development models. Enables citizens to acquire resources and information they need so as to hold governments accountable in making informed decisions about their development. “Openness” in all stages and components of development (policy, systems, sectors, content creation, access, use, open participation in use, open licensing, open content, open data, and open government. This leads to participatory development, strengthens the legitimacy of the government and creates a focus on inclusion and social justice.

What does Open Development require?1. There must be “valuing voice” - to participate in decision making

across social, economic, cultural and political spheres.

2. Attaching value to voices means recognising those voices which necessitates active listening.

3. This makes it participatory development with participatory content creation.

4. Which gives an open social arrangement that enables:

wider reach-out to the marginalised communities for diversity of the voices.

useful local debate on local issues that can also be relevant to other localities which strengthens networks distribution.

5. Then core technological infrastructure binds this new behavioral change for an open development society.

Where does it start and by who…?It can start from top, middle or bottom..there for it could be:1. Civil society groups- ‘civic activists’. 2. An engaged ‘middle layer’ of skilled government bureaucrats.3. A top-level mandate motivated by either an outside force or a

political administration hungry for change.4. Shape of international development aid partners.

What are the indicators? Open government and citizens emphasing transparency,

collaboration. Collective action by citizens to tackle their development challenges. Co-creation and ownership of development solutions by

government and citizens. Wide use of development knowledge from a feedback and learning

process. Development partners have embraced open data and knowledge

solutions.

What can the key actors do…Government?1) Promote sector and cross sector enable collaboration and

transparency through different e-transformation strategies.

2) Develop the capacity to drive transformation across government and to advance skills in its institutions and civil service

3) Government needs to formulate policies, regulations and laws to support use of ICT to transform service delivery.

4) The government is also expected to formulate common standards for transformation to enable:

An open government and civil society to participate in content and service creation

Promote reasonable trust in ICT systems usage interoperability among between the data, documents and services.

Support private sector engagement in service delivery (outsource ICT management to reduce rate of failure IT components in Government projects e.g embrace cloud computing.)

General Open Development ChallengesChallenges of becoming open vary from country to country but..

1) Since power is linked to information then power bureaucrats may feel threatened by sharing data.

2) The preparation and processing of open development data may be seen as new extra work load for officers in government agencies.

3) Data sometimes may be unavailable in certain development agencies hence no open data for open development initiatives.

4) The society needs to reactivate documentation culture/practice.

5) Semantic interoperability of systems challenges(Ontology technology needed)

6) Need to translate open data and information on Open development into different languages.

7) There are high costs of data processing as most cases (PDF format).

Study Findings…Study Objectives: i. To assess the level of awareness about open development in

Uganda.ii. To find the available open development currently projects underway

in the Uganda. iii. To establish the utilization gaps of the value chain of Data in the

available initiatives.

Civil Society48%

Government33%

Private Sector20%

Organisation Type

Direct inter-views

17%

Mobile Phone survey

13%

Internet searches

36%

From gov-ernment

34%

Data Collection Process..

34% of the data is got from government departments directly although Internet searches for data from the internet wide.

Organisation’s website

; 28%

Mobile Phone(SMS); 3%

Electronic mail; 18%

Printed reports

; 27%

Radio and newspapers

; 24%

Data Dissemination Channels..

Available Data is mainly distributed through printable report formats and via the organisation’s website

Health and Evnvironment13%

Governance,Advocacy21%

Agriculture and Envi-ronment

23%

Education And Training17%

Finance and Bussiness9%

Industry and ICT8%

Energy and Mining6%

Others4%

Nature\ Sector of Data

Most of the data is collected on Agriculture (34%)initiatives followed by Governance /advocacy initiatives

Very Good 24%

Good41%

Fair 35%

Challenging issues were ranging from:

1. Funding and limited budgets.2. Mindset and attitude of different stakeholders.3. Limited access to media and locations.4. Getting the community to participate.5. Quality of available research facilities and services.6. The culture and terms of reading and sharing.7. Interference by government offices.

Open Data Utilisation Rating

Open Development Challenges ..

Need for pioneering institutions (civil society, media, academic) to work closely with government to execute the necessary policy on open development that bases on the right to information access act of Uganda.

The pioneering institutions should focus on creating awareness and conceptualisation of open development behavior or culture in Uganda.

Ready institutions need to start with the little available data and improve along the way.

The idea open development needs to be built into the processes of national development programme, vision and general panning for Uganda’s development.

This needs to secure government directive on open development to all its departments and agencies.

Open Development Challenges ..

Q & ATHANK YOU