PILOT PROJECT ON VILLAGE E-GOVERNANCE IN TANZANIA Contents: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Project Background and Objectives Project Environment: Structure, Ownership and Sustainability Project Training Activities Infrastructure and Applications 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: 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 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 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.

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 2. ICT Training ICT awareness and competencies for users, mainly in office support systems Agriculture services

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. 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 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: 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 of ownership, 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:

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.