Dear Eddi, I read with interest your posting on introducing transparency and accountability in Indonesia.
Hats off to you. You have hit the nail on the head straight and square!! I have invariably seen that most world bodies fund where they can have a hold. Hence they target the local Governments. Then they get a red carpet welcome wherever they go. Invariably most funds are misused. It suits everyone to make the rich and powerful, more powerful. If they instead fund the community, whom can they approach to show off to the world. In another message posted to a different list, I made the following points: My observations are simple and straight. The community knows what they need. The Digital Divide is created and felt by outsiders to the community and not within the community. The present attempts at e-Governance are a ploy by the MNC electronics, hardware and networking vendors to push electronic gadgets and computers on poor countries, which are hardly put to right use. It's high time this is exposed. Unless true use of ICT tools and computers is done to alleviate poverty, all forms of the divide shall continue. The poor nations are making the rich nations richer at the cost of poor nations, thanks to the fooling around of people through ICT. So neither the world bodies nor the local governments will come forward, unless there is lot of money available. Thus the local community is a victim of circumstances and incidentally may get some short-term benefit to their long-term detriment. I have seen this happen with many loans given locally, fraudulently, and huge interest collected and then written off. If true development is envisioned, there must be no cash transactions and every penny spent must be made transparent and accountable to the community at large. It should be a voluntary affair, of the locals, by the locals, for the locals. Kris Dev On 5/6/05, Eddi Sakti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ..snip... > 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. ..snip... ------------ 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
