Public participation in government: assessing m-Participation in South Africa and Tanzania

Abstract

Like many other developing countries, in order to improve those governmental processes intended to deliver services directly to its citizens, Tanzania has taken the ICT road. However, the country is facing some unexpected results. E-Government systems are available, but they are not used by the public; even systems specifically intended for public participation ("e-Participation" - systems intended to provide government with opinion about public needs) are not being used. Traditionally, public participation is achieved by a range of means: votes at election time, referenda, consultative committees, public fora, community meetings, consumer fora, workshops, interviews, reports and other public hearing events. The introduction of ICT is supposed to bring greater participation but it is not achieving this. This paper presents and tests an analytical framework that assesses e-Participation implementation using mobile technologies, drawing on a range of literature and the results of interviews with stakeholders in an exploratory case study in the South African city of Cape Town. The framework considers five actors as the main conceptual stakeholders of the process, and includes 16 areas and sub-areas of exploration; its purpose is to determine the place of e-Participation in a community. Mobile technology is included as a specific enabler and agent of change, hence "m-Participation". the paper concludes with a discussion of the results in the context of the difficulties faced in Tanzania and makes comparison between the situation in South Africa and Tanzania.