Tanzania+Report

8/4/2019 Tanzania+Report

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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 materialTrainees feedback


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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 theTanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) as implementing

partners.

Basic applications for improved governance have been identified. They include:

- 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. CD-

based 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 backon 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 on-

going 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.


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2. PROJECT ENVIRONMENT: STRUCTURE, OWNERSHIP AND

SUSTAINABILITY.

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 eachconsists 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 monitorand 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 air-

conditioning 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

- 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 withtreatment;

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.


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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

- 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;

- 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;

- 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:

- 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.


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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:

- Village administrative information such as:

- Household register

- Village ten cell leadership

-

Education Statistics

- Pupils at school per year

- School dropouts per year

- Causes for school dropouts

- Desks and Building requirements = inventor

- Health Statistics

- Immunization information

- Epidemics reports

- Health information from local government

- Cooperative and business services

- Agriculture services

2. ICT Training

- 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


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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 IV5. 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): Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition

15. Microsoft Office 2000.

- 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

- 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 anddecentralisation being undertaken by progressive governments. The


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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 thesegovernance 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:

- 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

- if the telecentre strategy contemplates replication at village level, these

pilots can constitute a model framework to address issues ofownership, sustainability, revenue and community involvement in

village telecentres

- 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:


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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 Centraladministrations, 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.

Documents

Tanzania+Report