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Computerising local government in Tanzania: the Kinondoni experience
Introduction
| Initiative Name: | Costech |
| Author: | Aloyce Menda |
| Implemented by: | Kinondoni Municipal Council (KMC) |
| Timeframe: | 1998-2005 |
| Country: | Tanzania [TZ] |
| Theme: | Governance |
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The Story
Background and context: Tanzanian e-governance is in its infancy. The central government website was inaugurated in 2000 and since then some government branches and local government authorities have focused on e-governance initiatives. Currently, an elaborate e-government strategy has been approved by cabinet and is awaiting implementation. The e-governance project was the brain child of the Tanzanian Commission of Science and Technology (COSTECH), intended as a follow-up to the recommendation of the 1998 national ICT round table on Governance facilitated by IICD. The project proposal followed a feasibility study of August 1998 conducted to investigate, identify and recommend possible areas for sustainable computerization in the local governments.
The development problem/obstacle addressed: The feasibility study identified data flow patterns and their reporting mechanisms within and across various government sectors. The COSTECH director of information, Mr. Theophilus Mlaki approached the Kinondoni Municipal Council (KMC) administration in 1998 to propose that it host the pilot e-government project. KMC is one of three municipal councils that form Dar es Salaam City Council (DCC), the top authority of the de-facto capital of Tanzania.
The Kinondoni area is regarded as home to the city’s high and middle income earners, privileged in terms of infrastructure improvement, living accommodations, social service provision and security. Most top government officials reside in the Kinondoni district. Based on its superior infrastructures and security, KMC attracts more local and foreign investors than the rest of the Dar es Salaam city area.Mlaki and his team from COSTECH faced a challenge in illustrating to key KMC officials how ICT and the e-government project would improve the KMC performance in all departments. The main concerns of KMC were cost saving and improvement in tax revenue collection, so the COSTECH team had to demonstrate how the e-governance project would boost good governance as well as revenue collection and service delivery without excessive costs and extra burden to tax payers. They succeeded and the pilot project took off in 1999 with financial and technical support from IICD and COSTECH. Thus the KMC became the first of the 126 local government authorities of Mainland Tanzania (municipalities and districts) to initiate an e-governance project.
“At that time there were only two office computers at the headquarters,” says Mlaki as he explains the challenges encountered in presenting the e-governance idea to the KMC leadership. Computers for the project were provided by IICD - and today there are more than 120 computers in use, most with Internet access, according to Mr. Joash Nyitambe, the IT consultant for KMC.
As one of the three municipal councils of the major city of Tanzania, KMC has many political, economical, social and administrative responsibilities. These include social (education and health) services delivery, tax collection, business licensing, council elections supervision, basic infrastructure (roads, water supply, etc) construction and maintenance, waste management, and the maintenance of security, law and order. However, the COSTECH feasibility study had earlier revealed that most of these tasks were manually processed and were largely ineffective and inefficient. Transparency was limited by a slow flow of information which impeded direct access to KMC public services.
Moreover, due to lack of a computerized Management Information System (MIS), the KMC resources were poorly managed, which translated into poor public services. The KMC project thus established a pilot MIS for the top administration. Databases for various services and records, such as health, education, birth, marriage and death, are computerized to facilitate good governance and to accelerate public services and the compilation of various social services reports. The process of registering and issuing birth, marriage and death certificates is now ten times faster than before the project inauguration. The project has also enhanced the management and processing of matters pertaining to foreign trade and investment in Kinondoni district.
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Impact Assesment
Awareness: Today few IT experts can talk about e-governance in Tanzania without referring to the KMC.
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Effects in the institution and/or sector : A vivid example of e-governance’s capacity to boost transparency in government operations at the local level and to minimize the loopholes for corruption can be found in the realms of business licensing and tax collection, which were extremely cumbersome before the e-governance project. Business licensing was contaminated with elements of corruption due to the slow manual processes – often a week or more - that lacked transparency. Today such elements are almost eliminated and businesspeople can process a license in one day. Furthermore, KMC administration has publicly started that the project is boosting revenue collections in all sectors and has reduced to the minimum public complaints about victimization, favouritism and corruption in taxation procedures.
Today few IT experts can talk about e-governance in Tanzania without referring to the KMC. The project bears those characteristics which mark modern ICT as a new engine of development: efficient interactivity, permanent (24 hour) network availability, a global reach through the Internet, and reduced costs. The project embodies exactly what the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) specify: “People centred development”.
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Embedding: The KMC project is now the reference model for all local governments in Tanzania, as the central government has approved that it be replicated across the country. Yet despite its remarkable successes and broad acceptance, replicating the model countrywide poses new challenges. In Tanzania, as in most developing countries, budget proposals often face a daunting question: Where should the meagre state resources go? Even with the benefits exemplified by the KMC project, most bureaucrats, particularly the administrators in local government authorities, remain hesitant about adopting ICT and point to cost as their biggest fear. Local government councillors question why their council’s budgets should allocate more money to ICT solutions, while some dispensaries and schools lack essential facilities such as electricity, telephone and stable water supply.
The answer, says Mlaki, lies in presentation. To be effective, ICT teams must operate as simple consultants rather than as expensive experts. Then the ICT teams can address the reservations of local authorities, demonstrating the broad long-term benefits of ICT implementation for e-governance.
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Lessons Learned
General: The KMC project is now the reference model for all local governments in Tanzania, as the central government has approved that it be replicated across the country. Yet despite its remarkable successes and broad acceptance, replicating the model countrywide poses new challenges. In Tanzania, as in most developing countries, budget proposals often face a daunting question: Where should the meagre state resources go?