Requirements to start in Ghana?

[Christoph Kowalewski]

Dear Alaveteli community,

I came across the Alaveteli site with an overview of all the platforms around the world that facilitate access to information. So far I only knew the German version of this approach.

In two weeks I will be facilitating a training on innovative transparency initiatives for NGOs in Ghana and I saw that there is no such platform in the country yet. Could you please tell me what are the requirements to start one?

Moreover, I also looked for African versions as a reference:

· I cannot read the Tunisian one because it is in French or Arabic.

- I saw that apart from that only the Libarian one is still running, but there are only 4 documented requests.

- The platforms in Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are no longer operational. Do you have any more information on this? What are the main challenges for the sustainability of such platforms? Is it "only" financial or do other factors play a greater role?

I would very much appreciate your help with my questions.

Kind regards,

Chris

[Jen Bramley]

Hi Chris!

Thanks so much for your email. FragDenStaat started out with a similar theory to WhatDoTheyKnow and Alaveteli, but written in a different coding language that was more familiar to the devs at OpenKnowledge Germany. 

First, it's great that you're doing this work with transparency initiatives in Ghana - we also run a global community of practice around Access to Information, would you be interested in joining? There's no fee, and we run online events which are completely optional every few months. We have a google group which is a little quiet but we're just starting out slowly! You can join here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeT9tFglSEyF9tyPCsDwJpiqoMohBWQ5ID-XFPgzyp0c8W3nA/viewform 

In terms of the requirements to start an Alaveteli, the biggest ones are internet access and the government departments being able to answer requests via email (not in the sense of it being a legal obligation - as many have been able to campaign and win on this point - but in the sense of it being a physical possibility because the departments have access to computers and the records are computerised). After this all the technical specifications and skills needed are listed at https://alaveteli.org/docs/getting_started/ 

Liberia is run by iLab but they face the issue mentioned above - there is an FOI law, it's a really good FOI law and the FOI officers in the government are really willing to answer requests BUT they rarely have access to computers and most of their records are in paper copy only so a digital request platform is less than useful. When we set up the platform we tried other ways of helping people make requests such as via community radio and via local cafes but it was extremely time intensive. 

Rwanda was running until recently but the domain was expiring and the people running it made the decision to close it because the technical overheads were becoming challenging. Democratic republic of Congo only ran for a short time and really similarly had internet problems and device access problems which made the site unsustainable. Uganda was running fine until recently and was run by the Africa FOI centre - unfortunately their domain got swiped by a squatter and is now impossible to get back. We still have the site in archive and I believe they're trying to sort it out. 

Having run user design workshops and Hackathons a few times in Ghana, I think there's a lot of will and there's possibility but the majority of the populace outside of the big cities will find it hard to use the site on the devices they do have access to, so it may end up becoming something that is really accessible to only an elite. If that feels like it works and you think the government have good enough connectivity and enough computerised documents to be able to respond, then it could be worth doing. I'd be interested to hear more about your trainings in any case and what the FOI/Transparency appetite is there now!

All the best

Jen

[Christoph Kowalewski]

Dear Jen,

Thank you very much for your comprehensive response! It will help in the discussion I expect to have about the existing social and technical basis for such a solution, and the experiences of other African countries will certainly be a very useful benchmark.

I took a look at the ICT Development Index to get an idea of the technical situation, but I have little knowledge of the level of digitization in Ghana's public administration.

The training is organized by an international donor and is aimed at NGOs working in the field of transparency and anti-corruption. My contributions are broad and touch on many anti-corruption related topics and different sector contexts. My expectation is to present a number of ideas and get feedback on which ones they might want to go deeper into for potential follow-up activities with or without the donor, independent of my persona.

As for your offer to join the community on access to information, thank you, but this is not one of my main areas of focus, but I will keep it in mind as I am connected to people who work in this area and maybe some of them will be interested.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Best,

Chris