Service delivery is poised to improve considerably, thanks go a government initiative to open data to its citizens.
Chief Secretary, Ambassador Ombeni Sefue
Speaking at the Open Data Readiness Day 2013 conference in Dar es Salaam, the Chief Secretary, Mr Ombeni Sefue, said the government was committed to fulfilling the requirements of the Open Government Partnership global initiative that it had joined.
“Time is of the essence and the government is doing all it can to ensure government opens its data to the public, because we believe that in this way we will promote public integrity and transparency and strengthen mechanisms for citizens’ engagement and participation in improving public service delivery systems in their areas,” he explained.
According to Wikipedia, open data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.
The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a global initiative that aims at promoting transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and encourage the use of new technologies to improve governance.
The OGP was formally launched in New York on September 20, 2011 by eight founding members, namely Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States and given the benefits, Tanzania declared its intention to join OGP during the launching meeting.
Mr Sefue said the initiative aimed at building greater trust with the public and that the government had picked water, education and health as the first sectors to open its data. The World Bank Chief Innovation Officer and former White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Mr Chris Vein, said a global movement had begun to promote transparency and democratisation of data.
“Open data in the United States is helping change how the government operates. However open data initiatives are only workable when the data is used into something useful,” he said.
He said many people had fears and reservations about putting data in the open, but there were countries like Kenya where it had proved to help make predictions and helped bring about solutions.
Twaweza Director, Mr Rakesh Rajani, said that experience showed there were many people in the public domain who were very scared of the government and that little might change when the government became open unless the government changed its ways. Mr Rajani suggested that the government should start getting open because the nation was very rich in data but, unfortunately, it wasn’t released.
“I firmly believe that if you start releasing data from surveys, from the National Bureau of Statistics, financial data, health and water and provide an avenue for people to comment, it would start the ball rolling,” he advised.
He said it was vital for the government to understand who the target audience was, saying that 90 per cent of projects in the country tended to fail because they were not user-centred and designed and that data should matter by giving incentives for the people to access data when it became open.
By MASEMBE TAMBWE, Tanzania Daily News
