Spatially Enabled e-Services Delivery in Uganda

Reducing poverty through knowledge and communication

Up to 25% of Ugandans live below the poverty line due to reasons that include inadequate accessibility to knowledge and inefficient service delivery by government to citizens. The government of Uganda recognizes the important role that good governance, accessible health services and education have to play in reducing poverty. For the fight against widespread poverty in Uganda to succeed, increased training, uptake of information and communications technologies (ICTs) and use of e-services offer the promise of better access to knowledge and services.

E-government services

Given that a large part (more than 80%) of information required for decision-making, planning, and executive activities has a spatial component such as location, e-government services become more powerful if they are spatially enabled. However, spatial enablement of e-services has not been well met in most e-government services and still needs improved high level research and design. In addition, the nature of spatial information and services in terms of format, standards and processing tools are different from other types of (normal) information and services. This calls for in-depth technical research and training for designing and implementing spatially enabled e-services.

Data infrastructures

E-services in Uganda are largely dominated by the concerns of central government, usually with little input from stakeholders at the local levels of government, the private sector, and academia. Much of the data used for decision making by the various stakeholders are based on redundant heterogeneous independent databases. Government decision making has much to benefit from harmonization and integration of these (spatial) databases that is achieved through implementing Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI).