Ugandan man throwing a brick into a fire

Photo credit: Reuters/Edward Echwalu

Protests over rising fuel and food prices continue despite Ugandan government attempts to slow them down by blocking Facebook, Twitter, and censoring media content.

Last week, President Yoweri Museveni cited social media and negative media coverage as primary proponents of fueling social unrest amid state led violence.

Protestors boycotted fuel purchases by “walking to work” for the past two months in an effort to demonstrate against the government spending at a time of heightened government expenditures.

In Uganda, the price of staples such as wheat have increased up to 40%, according to the World Bank.

UCC wrote to all ISPs last month asking them to block access to the two social media websites for 48 hours, but their request was denied.

“If someone is telling people to go and cause mass violence and kill people and uses these media to spread such messages, I can assure you we’ll not hesitate to intervene and shut down these platforms,” Godfrey Mutabazi, executive director of the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) stated last month.

The Uganda’s communications regulator relies on Internet service providers to enforce their demands, as they cannot block access to the sites themselves.

Separately, last week Museveni described both local and international media, like the BBC, as “enemies of the state” at a time when journalists are reporting brutal assaults and harassment by security forces.

Journalists have imposed a news blackout on the Ugandan government in protest against what they described as rising brutality against covering demonstrations over the high prices. The media blackout includes official police and army functions.

Following Museveni’s warning this week, the outgoing Minister for Information, Kabakumba Masiko, told BBC’s Network Africa program that Ugandan laws would be amended to deal with any journalist who behaves as an “enemy of the state”.

She state on the program:

If you look at the way these media houses have been reporting what has been going on in our country, you realise they were inciting people and trying to show that Uganda is now ungovernable, is under fire as if the state is about to collapse.

Early last year the minister took a proposed Press and Journalist Amendment Bill to the Cabinet, where it creates a new publication offense of “economic sabotage”.

 Ugandan president  Museveni with paper accusing media of sabotage

Museveni accused media of sabotage in 2008 address Photo credit: Monitor

If passed, the law would give absolute dominance to Media Council, the statutory regulator, the authority to revoke the license of any media outlet that publishes “material that amounts to economic sabotage”.

The officials’ efforts are part of a recent trend by autocratic governments to block social media sites and having media blackouts to control social movements.

The US State Department spokesman issued a statement of concern in how blocking communication mediums adversely affects civil society.

“We are also concerned by reports that the Ugandan government has attempted to restrict media coverage of these protests and, on at least one occasion, block certain social networking websites,” the statement said.

The ongoing role of social media and the concurrent suppression of media freedom in anti-government protests make governments’ actions against civil society measurable and accountable.

It is clear that the future of reporting will be increasingly difficult for authoritarian countries to really control what their people see and hear.

 

 

From CommGap

Accountability Through Public Opinion Book Cover“Accountability” has become a buzzword in international development. Development actors appear to delight in announcing their intention to “promote accountability”—but it is often unclear what accountability is and how it can be promoted. This book addresses some questions that are crucial to understanding accountability and for understanding why accountability is important to improve the effectiveness of development aid. We ask: What does it mean to make governments accountable to their citizens? How do you do that? How do you create genuine demand for accountability among citizens, how do you move citizens from inertia to public action?

The main argument of this book is that accountability is a matter of public opinion. Governments will only be accountable if there are incentives for them to do so—and only an active and critical public will change the incentives of government officials to make them responsive to citizens’ demands. Accountability without public opinion is a technocratic, but not an effective solution.

In this book, more than 30 accountability practitioners and thinkers discuss the concept and its structural conditions; the relationship between accountability, information, and the media; the role of deliberation to promote accountability; and mechanisms and tools to mobilize public opinion. A number of case studies from around the world illustrate the main argument of the book: Public opinion matters and an active and critical public is the surest means to achieve accountability that will benefit the citizens in developing countries.

This book is designed for policy-makers and governance specialists working within the international development community, national governments, grassroots organizations, activists, and scholars engaged in understanding the interaction between accountability and public opinion and their role for increasing the impact of international development interventions.

woman placing paper ballot for Nigerian elections

Photo Credit: DailyMail

For many of the 73 million registered voters in Nigeria, the decision they were faced with on election day was not just who to vote for, but how to cast their ballot safely.

This year’s election, only the 3rd national election held in Nigeria since military rule ended in 1999 was fraught with difficulties and confusion, including two postponements of the election after what officials call “logistical problems.” Previous votes- in 2003 and 2007 – were marred by allegations of widespread ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and violence.

Amidst this backdrop, Nigerian voters turned to social media and mobile apps to help them make their voices heard.

Mobile phone applications and SMS were utilized to monitor and evaluate official election results and processes. Looping this information back to Nigerian citizens empowered their action and created an effective and transparent means for free and fair electoral processes.

One application called ReVoDa, is part of the EnoughisEnough (EIE) Nigeria’s RSVP campaign, and connected voters to monitor and evaluate the entire election processes. This is a medium where citizens could report incidents such as ballot box thefts, violence, the late arrival of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officials, police behaviors, and ultimately, the election results. INEC officials are responsible for running the elections, thus they represented the voice of the people to the authorities.

With ReVoDa, EiE Nigeria had the potential to turns the 87,297,789 Nigerians with mobile phones, 43,982,200 with Internet access and 2,985,680 on Facebook into informal election reporters.

ReVoDa allowed voters to report as independent citizen their observations from their respective

Photo of Revoda mobile phone applicationpolling units across Nigeria, having registered to map their mobile number, name and polling unit number to specific locations. This allowed EiE Nigeria to send relevant information about the electoral process to registered users; and users can view and share reports of electoral processes with one another.

Subsequent to their connectivity, users could choose from the ReVoDa Mobile App or connect via regular SMS, the latter seems to a more popular alternative. Users would create a profile, enter their Polling Unit Code and Name and are then registered on the EiE Nigeria network.

A week prior to the polls opening, ReVoDa, was downloaded by over 7,700 people. Building on the reports received on April 9 for the National Assembly elections, they saw 466 new incident reports from ReVoDa users across 35 of 37 states – compared with 27 states the week before.

 

Screenshot of finally election results

Report map of final election results

A similar program called ReclaimNaija has corresponding aims, but provides deliverable reports directly to the

ReclaimNaija logo corresponding electoral bodies.

ReclaimNaija uses FrontlineSMS to receive and send text messages reports, and Ushahidi to visually map the election reports. Alike to ReVoDa, ReclaimNaija makes it possible for citizens to monitor the electoral process and report incidents of electoral fraud.

Unlike ReVoDa though, ReclaimNaija has a direct line of communication with electoral officials. Instead of having a database that merely aggregates information and contains reports, they send the reports directly to INEC. By providing evidence of detrimental electoral processes, it can be combated and corrected.

Femi Taiwo, a member of INITS Limited, a Nigerian company that helped set up the technical side of ReclaimNaija’s monitoring system, says:

On election days, citizens have been frustrated by a number of things; missing names, seeing ballot boxes stuffed or even stolen and other electoral fraud and yet being unable to do anything about this. This time however, is the time to speak out”

ReclaimNaija's map of the final election numbers

ReclaimNaija's map of the final election numbers

ReclaimNaija uses FrontlinSMS or calling dedicated numbers in four major languages (Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Pidgin) as the gateway platforms to placing reports to promote electoral transparency.

Another difference between these two programs is that ReclaimNaija achieved a large amount of participation through voter education forums for community leaders, spread across Nigeria’s 36 states, and the capital Abuja. By engaging community based social networks, they ensured the information got across to large segments of society and has been crucial to RecalimNaija’s monitoring and evaluation.

Public launch of the reclaimnaija.net citizens reporting platform on the 2011 elections

Public launch of the reclaimnaija.net citizens on the 2011 elections

During the January 2011 Voters Registration Exercise, ReclaimNaija received 15,000 reports from the public over two weeks, highlighting the importance to have a election monitoring service to offset problems and expose fraud.

The election registration process proved this; on receiving messages about problems such as lack of registration cards, ReclaimNaija was often able to communicate with the INEC, thus helping improve the efficiency of the registration process.

One message received through ReclaimNaija during the first attempt at the National Assembly election said:

more than half of registered voters here [in my voting station] couldn’t find their names… Is this an attempt to reduce the number of voters in Lagos?

These type of citizen based reports and monitoring systems have become a valuable source of information for the INEC to create an environment for fair and balanced elections. ReclaimNaija collate reports and send directly on to the INEC in real time.

“If the INEC hadn’t seen these reports they would not have known about the level of problems being experienced by Nigerians; there would not have been this kind of proof” says Linda Kamau, an Ushahidi developer was in Nigeria to see the launch of ReclaimNaija system.

Kayode R. Idowu, Chief Press Secretary for the INEC Chairman, responded positively to ReclaimNaija and citizens actively reporting incidents to the Commission, “…through SMS and voice calls on phones, or by emailing. Such reports should reflect useful details such as location, time and action involved in the incident, to enable the Commission respond appropriately”.

Clearly, there is a great power in leveraging the use of ICTs to ensure that Nigerian voices were heard in this past election and streamline the efficiency and safety of the electoral process.

 

 

 

Protestors in Cairo

Not organized using Facebook

“This was not a Facebook revolution,” intoned Amira Maaty flatly, as she sat on a panel last night at Johns Hopkins University entitled “Social Media’s Role in Recent Events in the Middle East.”  Ms. Maaty, a program officer focusing on Egypt and Libya at the National Endowment for Democracy, was specifically referring to the recent revolution in Egypt, and her surprising remarks proved remarkably uncontroversial.

It seems that those who study North Africa haven’t been caught up in the rush to credit social media with catalyzing revolution. Instead, they take a more nuanced view.

The panel, which also included veteran journalist Jeffrey Ghannam and Jessica Dheere of the Social Media Exchange in Beirut, advocated the role of networks more broadly in bringing about the massive social change we have seen unfold over the last month.  Facebook and social media certainly played some role in helping to energize those networks, notably through the “we are Khaled Said” group, but it’s role in actually creating them is debatable.  Further, the daily coordination of demonstrators was more likely to be done via SMS, Google chat, or email.  It is easy to forget that, despite all the hype in the western media, the vast majority of Egyptians do not use Facebook.

Further, the panel explained, the lack of large and strong networks may play a role in explaining why upstart revolutions have been less successful elsewhere, even though indicators such as mobile penetration rates and facebook usage are similar.  In Bahrain, for example, it is likely that the state security apparatus can much more easily monitor the population because it is so small.  In Lebanon, fractures in the societal structure between Christians and Muslims prevent large networks from forming.  It could be that these social structures are more critical in allowing for successful revolution than any media, even if that media can play a complimentary role

UAE workshop in Palace Hotel in Old Town Dubai

UAE workshop in Palace Hotel in Old Town Dubai

Earlier this month at the Palace Hotel in Old Town Dubai, the UAE held a workshop attended by General Managers, Executive Managers, IT Executives, Government Communication Executives and Webmasters from the Federal Government bodies to discuss how government departments can best use, organize and implement e-government and social media.

Screenshot of highlights of social media usage in Arab states in 2010

Screenshot of study: Highlights of social media usage in Arab states in 2010

According to the Dubai School of Government on their Arab Social Media report, the UAE is ranked first among Arab countries with close to 50 percent its population owning Facebook accounts, which represents 10 per cent of the total number of users in the entire Arab world. In addition, UAE is now among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of Facebook penetration, raising their government’s awareness on a need to streamline their online presence.

During the workshop, H. E. Salem Khamis Al Shair Al Suwaidi, Director General, General Information Authority discussed a primary evaluation made by the UAE website by their eGovernment team.

Referencing how eGovernment evolved and the guidelines were conceived, Suwaidi added:

Our work on this field comes in line with our decision to apply the concepts of the second generation of eGovernment Gov. 2.0. In this we have been inspired by H. H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai; who long ago established accounts on both Facebook and Twitter and has been using them to communicate and interact with people

The documents presented guidelines on Multimedia, Web content, Social Media Networking, eParticipation and Open Data policies and also included an updated Web standards document.

Screenshot of Official E-Government Site of Dubai

Official E-Government Site of Dubai

The Updated Web Standards declared at the workshop spelt out the internationally accepted uniform practices and procedures that government bodies should follow for their website layout and design to be compliant with the recommendations laid out by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

In addition, the announced guidelines comply with the requirements identified by the 2010 United Nations eGovernment Survey, which are used by the United Nations to assess the readiness of eGovernment programs around the world.

The UAE evaluation team also launched guidelines for the appropriate use of social media by various government employees. This document was prepared in partnership with Dubai School of Government with contribution from Gartner Inc. and United Nations eGovernment Survey team.

The aim of this document is to leverage social media tools by employees of government entities in a responsible, effective manner to collaborate with civil society and engage them in designing/distributing government programs and service.

Due to the various applications of social media sites, the guidelines recommend: “Access to social media sites shouldn’t be banned. Employees should be held accountable for any improper use of any social media site.” However, it cautions that:

Because of the dynamic nature of social media, a list of recommended websites should be developed and updated by the Social Media Unit periodically in a collaborative, rather than top-down manner

The workshop divulged that by abiding to these guidelines, the participation in eGovernment and eServices will increasingly become more convenient, competent, and content for civil society. This holds great precedence for the UAE, who wants to raise their position in the U.N. E-Readiness Index.

Governments from all around the world are recognizing the power of social media in effectively communicating with their citizens. They are also developing initiatives to create similar guidelines for the web content on government portals so interoperability can enhance their online capabilities.

In Europe, the European Commission Information Society aims to support with its eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015. The Action Plan identifies provisions for a new generation of eGovernment services for businesses and citizens, where four political priorities are based on the Malmö Declaration agreed on in 2009 in Sweden. The four priorities are to empower citizens and businesses; reinforce mobility in the single market; enable efficiency and effectiveness; and create the key enablers and pre-conditions to make things happen.

Additionally, in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Plan of Action for the Information and Knowledge Society in Latin America published in November 2010 outlines the region’s objectives for e-governance. These include treating e-government as an obligation of all countries for its citizens and to achieve transactional and participatory e-government.

You can research other countries principles and procedures on e-governance by viewing the U.N. E-Government Survey for 2010 here in our document library.

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