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Activities » Cyber Series » SERIES 2007 - AUGUST EDITION: ICT AND SOCIAL

  • How does it work
  • How has it been applied in Ghana
  • How can it be harnessed and made more efficient in Ghana with the use of ICT.

These and many more issues, where the focus of the August edition of Cyber Series held on August 2, 2007. With a dedicated and accountable moderator and panellists who were all there 6minutes before time, this edition of the cyber series took off on time.

The first speaker Dr William Ahadzi from the Centre for Policy Studies – divided his presentation into three main parts, namely:

  • the concept of social accountability
  • social accountability in Ghana
  • the interface between ICT and Social Responsibility

On the concept of social responsibility, Dr William stayed that social accountability is not a new concept to our society. To him it exits within our traditional systems and has been incorporated into the broader social system.
Dr Williams went ahead to postulate that social accountability creates an environment where public office holders are held accountable for their actions or … because they are acting on behalf of the people (managing their affairs). He expanded that social accountability thus calls for the following principles:

  • transparency
  • the opportunity for citizens to participate in the decision making process
  • equity in the disbursement of resources
  • accountability

THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH TO ACCOUNTABILITY

To Dr Williams, this approach has been practiced over time. It represents for instance typical political checks and balances as observed in the overlapping relationships existing among the executive, legislative and the judiciary. According to him, this approach also exists in an administrative system where you can use security apparatus to exert a certain level of accountability. He also categorised pro-accountability institutions like the OMBUTSMAN (The Public Complaints Commission) which in Ghana’s case is the CHRAJ under set ups that reflect the traditional approach.

SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

Dr William submitted that the traditional approach to accountability reflects only “the supply side” where institutions and public office holders are obligated to give account of their activities and the authenticity of this account, not ascertained.
He said that “the Demand Side” which is the crux of social accountability is missing in the traditional approach/system of accountability. Social accountability he opined exerts/engages the demand side whereby citizens reserve the right to demand accountability from office holders. He said that social accountability therefore needs two groups to be properly so called (and without which the concept is a farce) namely:

  • The Power Holders – the Office Holders
  • The Right Holders – The Citizens

Dr William expressed the belief that the ground is ripe for citizens to demand accountability options, given the following pointers

  • Growing Democratisation
  • Increasing voter turn ups
  • Public debates which express citizens’ intentions and positions in policy issues.
  • Tracking delivery of public services (such as Budgets and Funds) in terms of how efficiently and equitably are resources being used. He added that citizens demanding social accountability will aid
  • The Fight Against Corruption, and
  • Encourage citizens to be involved in decision making.

WHY BE INTRESTED IN ENSURING SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

To Dr William, people should be interested in ensuring social accountability because of the following:

  • Poor Access to services because they are delivered in an inefficient manner
  • Abuse of Authority and Discretion
  • Slow and Mis-appropriation of Funds
  • Corruption and Intervention middle-men in the area of resource release and use.

CONSTRAINTS

In Dr Williams’s opinion, the following are some of the constraints of social accountability are:

  • Information is not delivered on time or deliberately withheld by the Power Holders.
  • Lack of trust in the former system of ensuring accountability, which has made it difficult to believe in social accountability.
  • Fear of victimization for exposing wrong doing.
  • Lack of exit options, such that we are unable to ask questions.

APPROACHES OF SOCIAL ACCOUNATBILITY

This to Dr. Williams is quite varied, depending on the context. He however enunciated the following:

  • Information sharing, which will ensure that citizens know their rights and entitlements
  • Service delivery monitoring system, whereby citizens will ensure that services are delivered appropriately.
  • Participatory Budgeting: This according to him, has ensured that fiscal budget is no longer a process by only office holders. It has been democratised so that the ordinary citizen is part of the decision making process as to how money is given and spent. It also helps citizens monitor how policies are released and implemented.
  • Tracking systems for broad-public expenditure
  • Participatory public evaluation
  • Investigative journalism.

SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY INITIATIVES

Dr. Williams then outlined certain social accountability initiatives existing in Ghana presently as follows:

  • The Ghana Community Radio Network, which is part of community process whereby specific discussions on service delivery within communities are discussed by members of the community.
  • Government Accountability Improved Trust: which empowers citizens to demand accountability through monitoring, to ensure delivery.
  • The HIPC watch.
  • Governance Programmes
  • Budget Advocacy
  • Radio and TV discussion Programmes

THE INTERFACE

To Dr. Williams, information sharing is at the centre of social accountability. To him, information sharing is very key in this endeavour because

  • It enhances transmission of knowledge of levels and times of resource movements
  • It helps determine value for money
  • It strengthens coalition and alliances
  • It makes it possible to promptly mobilise and engage (fight) policies. E.g Privatisation of public good.
  • It helps to reduce the excessive powers residing in office holders and policy makers.

On how ICT is applied to social accountability, Dr. Williams highlighted the following:

  • Opinion Polling – He said that radio stations like Joy FM have used this well. BBC’s “have your say” is another good example.
  • On the supply side is e-governance where government has a website where citizens can go and get information on government activities and service delivery. It is a step in the right direction, even though it is hardly ever up to date.
  • Participations and feature articles on websites such as my joy on-line and Ghanaweb.
  • Signature collection/Email/text messaging.
  • Radio/TV discussion/phone-in programmes.

On the CHALLENGES of ICT as a tool for social accountability, Dr. Williams enunciated the following:

  • Availability of hardware: High cost for access and low coverage
  • Functionality of software
  • Poor infrastructure (power supply), which for instance affects almost instant reaction in terms of mobilisation.
  • Computer illiteracy
  • Quality of information released from the supply side

Dr. Williams concluded his presentation by saying that ICT is a very necessary tool in ensuring social accountability, because social accountability cannot be efficient without information reaching that enlighten the citizens and prompt them to act. He stated that ICT is key and its relevance can never be over emphasized.

In his very academic but very enlightening presentation, ISSIFU LAMPO of the Canadian Parliamentary Centre, Accra starting by expounding on what Social Accountability stands for, referred to Cavil and Sahail (2004, p. 157) and defined SA as: “when agent A is accountable to agent B then A is obliged to inform agent B about agent’s A’s actions and decisions, to justify them, and suffer punishment in the case of eventual misconduct”. He went further to submit that with respect to service provision, this implies that public officials and service providers must be answerable to citizens for their actions and behaviour. He went on to say (according to Rasheed & Olowo-1994) that public officials and service providers can be said to be accountable to the citizenry when they conduct their work in an open , transparent, and responsive manner.
 
On the meaning and potential of ICT, Mr. Lampo said the following:

  • Information and Communication Technologies is made up a complex and heterogeneous set of goods, applications and services used to produce, process, distribute and transform information.
  • It consist of segments as diverse as telecommunications, television and radio broadcasting, computer hardware, software and services and electronic media (for example, the internet and electronic mail)
  • The term ICT has also been used to encompass technological innovation and convergence in information and communication-development of information knowledge societies, with resulting changes in social interaction, economic and business practices, political engagement, education, health, leisure and entertainment
  • ICT also have the potential to improve interaction between Governments and Citizens, fostering transparency and accountability in governance   

On the Frameworks of Social Accountability, he said that essentially, accountability frameworks take two forms: horizontal accountability (which refers to the capacity of state institutions to check on abuses by other public agencies and branches of government. Examples, Audit Service and vertical accountability), and Vertical accountability (which refers to the means whereby citizens, mass media, and civil society actors seek to enforce standards of good behaviour and performance by public officials and service providers)
He focused his presentation more on vertical accountability with respect to how citizens and civil society groups use ICT to promote Social Accountability  and noted as premise for his focus the that Social Accountability initiatives can lead to empowerment, particularly of poor people.

On ICT and Citizens empowerment Mr. Lampo said that there is a growing evidence on the benefits of ICT for citizen empowerment through increasing their access to health, nutrition, education and other human development opportunities such as political participation, and that experience throughout Africa illustrates creative solutions to provide access and use of ICT as a tool for participation. He sited as a classical example the Uganda situation, where the Uganda Media Women’s Association established a radio programme-Mama FM-where women can actively participate and learn about development issues such as human rights, children, governance etc. He also made mentioned of the Kenya “Eye on Kenyan Parliament” website called mzalendo which among many other things it engages in, highlights persistent lack of quorum in Parliament which affects the work of parliament and clamours for it to be addressed. Though it was observed that this is not watertight, he referred to the SMS System to link MPs and Electorate was launched in 2005 in Ghana.
Social Accountability Mechanisms and Applications in Ghana
Here Mr. Lampo outlined the following:

  • Budget Analysis
  • Participatory Budget Expenditure Tracking
  • Social Audits
  • Participatory Performance Monitoring-Citizen Report Cards (CRC) and Community Score Cards (CSC)
  • Text messaging
  • Radio Discussion and Phone in calls

Stressing particularly on the Community Score Cards and citizens involvement, he said that the CSC

  • Permits tracking of inputs or expenditures, monitoring the quality of services and projects
  • Generates performance indicators criteria that can be used in resource allocation and budget decisions
  • Compares performance across facilities and districts
  • Generates feedback direct feedback mechanism between providers and users; and
  • Employs a methodology for soliciting user’s perception about the quality, efficiency, and transparency similar to that used by citizen report cards and that ICT can be used to improve the channels of communication and dissemination of information

On the challenges inherent in this endeavour in Ghana Mr. Lampo opined that chief among others is the digital divide is often characterized by low levels of access to technologies. Internet usage figures collected by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2003 illustrate this gap in access. For example, the US reported 5,558 internet users per 1,000 persons, compared with 690 users per person in Asia and 156 users per 10, 000 per person in Africa infrastructure development. He added to the list

  • Illiteracy (including computer illiteracy)
  • Language barriers
  • Weak infrastructure
  • The fact that Government decides the quality and quantity of information they give to the public, and they are not very commitment to prompt response to public observation.
  • The lack of computers, connectivity, skills and capacity for serious research and tracking of information.

On the way forward, Mr. Lampo advocated for the empowerment of the citizenry in terms of knowledge, skills and access to ICT. He also added here, that it will be good for the government of Ghana to facilitate the development of a reliable cost effective ICT infrastructure.

He concluded by saying that Research shows that citizens’ disaffection with government relates largely to issues of responsiveness and accountability. Therefore, by providing critical information on rights and entitlements through ICT; and soliciting feedback from the citizens through ICT also, social accountability mechanisms can provide means to increase the voice of citizens.

Beginning his presentation by introducing his organisation, Mr. Vitus Azeem said that the Ghana Integrity Initiative is the local chapter of the Transparency International whose major objective is to fight against corruption. Launched in Ghana in December 1999, he said that Ghana Integrity Initiative is a civil empowerment organisation that tries to promote anti-corruption activities, and is always pleased to discuss social accountability.

To him, social accountability is a relatively new concept as far as the Ghanaian society is concerned. He postulated that a country is not a private business and as such anything done in the name of the country must reflect the public interest. To this extent, office holders are expected to act in the interest of the people. According to him policy makers and service providers must

  • generate public resource transparently and fairly; and
  • spend resources equitably

WHY SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

Mr. Azeem opined that the human is greedy by nature. Thus there must be an initiative that can check the excesses of anyone that has been given the responsibility of handling other people’s affairs and resources. To him social accountability ensures that office holders keep to their promise, and puts them under pressure to react to the agitations of the citizenry.
He believes that one person might not be able to effect change in the society, but when he mobilises other people with the same vision, their common voice will be heard and taken more seriously. This according to him is why civil societies are very needful.

GOVERNMENT AND SOCIAL ACOUNTABILITY

Budget Formulation and Implementation: Mr. Azeem in establishing that the citizenry plays a certain level of role in governance, referred to a September 2005 publication wherein the Government of Ghana invited contribution from citizens and civil society in the process of formulating the 2006 budget. Whether their view and contributions were put into consideration or not, Mr. Azeem saw this as a step in the right direction and also referred to the appendix to the budget which had a list of all the people and organisations that made contributions.
Budget Analysis: He said here that the citizenry has played a vital role in drawing the attention of policy makers on how the budget is implemented in terms of priority.
Tracking: Mr. Azeem believes that this will ensure that money approved for a community for example, is disbursed and used appropriately.

In connecting the whole activity of social accountability to ICT, Mr. Azeem stated that ICT is very relevant in putting the information with which social accountability functions efficiently within the reach of the citizens and civil society. The advantages of this according to him include the fact that ICT:

  • Conveys information promptly – Ghana web for instance has a copy of the budget 5 minutes after it is read.
  • Conveys information in a manner and through channels that ensure quick and extensive mobilisation – Radio, TV and the Internet.
  • It gives the people a voice.

He noted however that whatever information that is put out there in the public domain must be true.

Mr. Azeem concluded by saying that despite the challenges, which his co-panellists had mentioned in their presentations (to which he subscribes), there is no doubt that ICT can enhance social accountability.

QUESTIONS, COMMENTS AND OBSERVATION

  • On which social accountability organisations exist in Ghana, Mr. Azeem said that no particular person(s) has been given the mandate to ensure social accountability, but when mobilisation is done, the expectation is more reckonable and forceful.
  • On the relationship between social accountability and social responsibility, and how they translate to the protection of the environment, Mr. Azeem said that there a thin line between social responsibility and social accountability, and that these two can work together to protect the environment and see to it that natural resources are exploited in the friendliest manner practicable.
  • - The media, which is presently at the forefront of ICT and social accountability is very biased and should be checked in terms of their presentation of issues. They should be made to be accountable in relation to their adverts and programmes, especially those which are perverting the youth and eroding our values and culture.
  • It is important for telecom providers to be more proactive in ensuring that ICT is accessible in the rural areas.
  • Social accountability so far does not exist. Office holders have the free hand to do what they want and the history of Ghana reflects this. The only place we see the influence of social accountability is in elections.
  • The Internet has played a very vital role in pushing social accountability, and it is an avenue that should be explored further.

The seminar ended with a call that every individual has something contribute to social accountability, and we must all take it upon ourselves to ensure that office holders are accountable.