District Administrative Network Programme - Uganda

The DistrictNet project was implemented by the Ministry of Local Government to improve communications between the different  government levels within a district: parish, sub-county, and district HQ in four different districts: Kayunga, Lira, Mbale and Mbarara. This was done by introducing data and voice communication links between the districts and lower level government offices as well as introducing electronic data processing in financial management, data communication, data storage and analysis.

This programme is an attempt to support the overall objective of the decentralisation programme by providing the district and lower councils with tools and infrastructure to handle increased responsibilities. The programme also promoted transparency and improved the provision of public information.

Read more about IICD’s Uganda Country Programme.

Although the four projects in the four pilot districts are not sustainable yet, the project officially continued independently from January 2007. IICD is supporting the four pilot districts in attracting other funding sources.

The project has the following goals:

• Reduce administrative costs by improving communications between the districts and lower councils
• Reduce the long cycle of releasing funds by donors and the Ministry of Finance by improving the process and capacity of districts and smaller local government offices to provide timely, accurate information
• Improve the district’s overall efficiency by setting up a single sharable database that can be used by all local government officers
• Train staff in basic ICT skills
• Enhance the  transparency and efficiency of local government offices; and
• Strengthen the public information function

To accomplish this, DistrictNet introduced data and voice communication links between the districts and lower level government offices as well as introducing electronic data processing in financial management, data communication, data storage and analysis.

Good governance programme supporting decentralization and transparency.

Read more about IICD’s approach towards governance.

A major difficulty in this project was that the implementation was taken care of by the Ministry of Local Governance. The quality of implementation was unsatisfactory. The focus at the beginning of 2005 was on decentralizing this project from the Ministry of Local Government to the districts themselves: this was achieved as a result of a workshop for all those involved in the project in May 2005. Implementation was much smooth from May 2005 but it remains a difficult programme due to amongst others:

• The high turnover of staff within the local government offices. This means that new staff is constantly having to be trained in ICTs. The challenge, therefore, lies in developing an ICT capacity development programme at the district level so that local government employees do not have to travel all the way to Kampala for their ICT training.
•  The same applies to computer maintenance: it is vital to ensure that a local pool of computer engineers is available in each district, otherwise the local government offices will be forced to contact Kampala with every computer problem.
• Financial constraints. The districts in Uganda have very limited budgets

In the long term, this project will be scaled-up to all 72 districts in Uganda. However, it is essential that the scaling-up process is carried out gradually and not rushed.

See above

Implemented governance programme in 4 pilot districts (Mbarara, Lira, Kayunga and Mbale) however financially not sustainable yet