Dear GKD Members, The problem with ICT for local government is that there is never enough money or people to do the job right. I have experienced this very problem in my own country, Indonesia. I will give you an example and I am sure the story is the same in other developing countries.
We started decentralization of the government responsibilities many years ago. Ministry of Health tried to decentralize a lot of responsibilities as was demanded by the law. The World Bank funded putting computers into kecamatan (Moderator's Note: 'district') to help improve their operations. The trouble was that the funding was too limited and most of the kecamatan did not get enough funds for them to use ICT to do their new responsibilities. Some of the funding required matching from the local government and many were not able to meet this requirement. This was not the fault of the Ministry of Health or the Government of Indonesia. As for my opinion, it was the fault of the World Bank's limited funding. These things cannot be done halfway or quickly. You need a lot of training and helping people change the way they gather, analyze and use the information in addition to the computers and the Internet. The funding is one problem, but there is an even bigger problem. Donors are saying that decentralization will help "transparency" which means that the local people will be able to see what their local government is doing and will be able to have more control over it. But at the local level the people do not know how to get the information that will keep their local government honest. This problem can be solved. Since it is impossible to train all the people in how to use ICT to get information, I think the best way is to train the local civil society organisations. It is an obvious solution! The problem is that the World Bank and other donors like to work with and through the government, and the government is often the main problem! Whereas the local community organisations can give ICT training and honest advice to local people about how to use ICT to get information they need. But of course it is also important that the donors pick the right community organisations because often profit-minded private companies act as though they are nonprofit and working on behalf of the local populations. This shows that ICT for decentralization can only work if the local people are involved and in control. They know the honest local organisations. They know what information they need about their government. I am very worried that this donor decentralization fad (as I call it) will make things worse in the local areas because ICT can make dishonest and powerful people even more powerful, even if they are at the local government level. My question, that was not posed by the Moderator, is: How can we get the international donor organisations to support local communities to use ICT so they can make local government better? Thank you for listening to my views. Eddi Sakti ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For past messages, see: http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html
