[kictanet] Governance debates Online - Using ICT to fight graft
Alice Munyua
alice at apc.org
Mon May 2 21:26:15 EAT 2011
Agree a great idea. As social media enables participation access,
collaboration and even transparency and has great potential to enhance
governance processes by way of facilitating participation from broad
based stakeholders/constituencies. Some of the features can be
used/applied to many aspects of governance, including feedback on anti
corruption initiatives, maintaining participation, direct involvement in
policy processes, deliberations, etc.
However, there are some fundamental limitations we must keep in mind
and deal with. To begin with, the disparity in internet access with
social media services still reflects an education and/or class bias.
Additionally, folks tend to join most networks as a means to an end, for
example joining some lists knowing that they are more likely to get the
ear of the service provider and/or government and this over reliance
would in the long run ends up undermining efforts that require
commitment and follow through, for those who have been members of this
list will bear witness to this particularly when it comes to policy
processes.
So are social networks the magic bullet to participation? I also tend
to think that social media sites have not really been developed for
governance in the way we may be thinking, for example face book has a
person cap, further, most of these sites were designed in ways to
encourage participation to serve advertising revenue so perhaps we would
need our very talented developers/skunks etc to begin to think about
developing Social media platforms suited to our governance, anti
corruption etc needs. A good example remains ushaidi.
Best
Alice
> This is actually a brilliant idea. Especially aggregating information
> on Social Media platforms. We already have some companies (e.g.
> www.gotissuez.com <http://www.gotissuez.com>) who report on such
> matters (corruption, poor service etc). We additionally have social
> media monitoring platforms that would be able to get random
> information on twitter about certain topics (e.g. you can monitor what
> people say about brand X or brand Y), many companies are already this
> sort of thing in place as it offers feedback on both the negative and
> positive aspects (many times, what is being done right is ignored).
> Additionally, consistent feedback that there is a problem in a
> particular area will point the anti corruption agencies in the right
> direction.
>
> Many companies use this information to monitor brand equity and
> customer complaints. It's just an issue of doing the same thing for
> the government...
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 8:05 PM, <bitange at jambo.co.ke
> <mailto:bitange at jambo.co.ke>> wrote:
>
> Lusters,
> I spent most of the day at KIA with other colleagues, civil society,
> religious groups and KEPSA to discuss strategies for fighting
> corruption.
> It was evident that as we get closer to election, the level of
> corruption
> goes up (read sugar). There was a sense of frustration that we
> are not
> making much progress. There was a dim of hope in the sense that
> where we
> have automated, revenues are up and less corruption. It was also
> clear
> that we (civil service) had sufficient delegated authority to
> significantly change the future of our nation. In areas where social
> media has been put to use, up to 60% of graft can be detected even
> before
> it is concluded.
>
> If we scale up the use of social media, a senior KACC official
> tells me
> that they would gladly embrace it. In this list we have many smart
> people. I need suggestions how we can integrate SMS, Twitter,
> Facebook
> and any other tool to assist in the fight against this scourge. In my
> considered view, the anwser lies in technology.
>
> However, One of the presenters said that the western method of
> fighting
> corruption through courts could be the problem. If you recall in
> 2008 at
> the height of the post election crisis in Mombasa, one businessman
> did not
> have to go to court to recover his goods opting to see a witch doctor.
>
> Any views would be highly appreciated.
>
>
> Regards
>
>
> Ndemo.
>
>
>
>
>
> > FYI
> >
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> >
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> With Regards,
>
> Phares Kariuki
>
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