ICT policy National Planning Authority - Uganda

The National Planning Authority (NPA), mandated to coordinate the national development planning, has taken ownership for the President’s campaign promise to integrate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) firmly into the national development planning efforts including the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP). It has taken up this task as a follow up of the Roundtable Workshop of November 2005, held in collaboration with I-Network Uganda and IICD.

This policy process at national level started in April 2005. The desired outcome is a National Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) strategy to realise the objectives of the PEAP (Poverty Eradication Action Plan) using ICT’s as a tool. This is vital since ICT for Development programmes will find it difficult to get support from development partners as long as the relation between the PEAP pillars and ICT has not been defined.

This political process was very successful. In 2006 a follow up process (again on request and co-funded by NPA) started up which aims at integrating the findings of the Round Table workshop which took place in November 2005 into the activities of the Government of Uganda.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can play an important role in development. It has been shown that ICTs are key tools that can be used to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Projects in Health, Education, Governance and other sectors have proven to work when the right conditions are created and the right technologies used. On this basis several processes are currently under way in Uganda to use ICTs for development; however the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) does not reflect ICTs as national priority, contrary to prevailing views of key stakeholders. The National Planning Authority wishes to investigate if this should and can be changed.

Indirect achievements include:

• Part of President Museveni’s manifesto for his next term (started in May 2006) included elements related to ICT integration and coordination in Uganda
• There is strong commitment at the National Planning Authority to pursue the ICT policy process
• A Ministry of ICT was established
• An ICT addendum for the PEAP was created

• A Roadmap to Integrate ICT into the PEAP and the overall National Development Framework and Systems

• A draft Corrigendum for the integration of ICT into PEAP 2004/5 - 2007/8 Pillars

• A Report on consultative meetings with Key stakeholders based on ICT Plans in relation to the PEAP, and a Final Corrigendum produced

• A National ICT Master Plan 

• The bigest accomplishment is that a Ministry of ICT was created in Uganda.

Read more about IICD’s approach towards Governance.

The main lesson learned is that policy making is a process which takes time because of politics involved.

The policy process was initiated with the National Planning Authority (NPA). The follow up process (which started only in the fourth quarter of 2006) aims to align the several ICT policy initiatives at national level to enable the formulation of an ICT Master Plan and the compilation of an addendum into the current Poverty Eradication Action plan. This is done in close cooperation with the Ministry of ICT, created as a result of the initial ICT policy process.