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iHub By Anne / March 30, 2012

Second M-governance workshop at the iHub Research

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How can citizens use with m-governance applications to interact with government? How many citizens understand what the term governance means?

iHub Research held its second workshop on m-governance on the 22^nd of March 2012.The aim of the workshop was to interact with key stakeholders in the industry that affect this sector: Academia, Civil Society, Developers and Civil Servants.

The research team represented by Angela and Hilda presented the findings of the Exploratory Survey (here) and UX pre-test on m-governance applications (here) to the participants and discussed the outcomes. Some findings that were highlighted:

• The majority of interviewed respondents did not think it was possible to raise complaints with the government or service providers in general, either due to lack of means to do so or no confidence in the existing media to raise complaints.
• M-governance: Exploratory Survey on Kenyan Service Delivery and Government Interaction Resistance:-It was hard to define some terms e.g. governance in Swahili
• From the User experience pre-test on M-governance application, the challenges were  that the 3 different applications work in different and not a standardized platform e.g. Android, SMS, USSD, Mobile-web (MsemaKweli, Huduma and Mzalendo), the  Interface:  Mobile phones have a small interface  and finally the Internet/network issues while testing the applications

“Most people will go looking for information from the person with the best access”

It was iterated that most people will go looking for information from the person with the best access, so when researching a topic in an area, make sure that you start with the leaders, or key people in that area, then you will be more likely to get more people in the community interested to participate.

Participants in the workshop suggested new areas to conduct the study like Northern Kenya, marginalized communities, partnering with key stakeholders in the regions like the church, or NGOs active. For the study, the stakeholders recommended working through the local community leaders to get the people of the community to actually try out the applications.

Following the recommendations of the participants in the workshop 2, the research team plans to conduct a full scale study and will now plan out the second phase of activities of the M-governance project.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Author : Anne

Anne W. Salim studies the growth of African mobile-based education with a focus on the sustainable use of technologies in schools. Anne is currently a researcher at iHub, where she leads the program on M-Governance. The study has focused on the role of mobile devices for enhancing transparency in governance of the water sector. Anne studied Business Information Technology from Strathmore University and her interests include applying Design Thinking processes to Kenya, as well as facilitating Hackathon events.