Learner’s Submission: HRCD in Uganda

“Uganda’s current core development vision is “transform Uganda from a 3^rd world to a middle income country”. Indeed, this vision is further explained in the National Development Plan (2010-2016).

The five-year Development Plan elaborates that Uganda desires to invest more in social infrastructure development, management and extraction of natural resources, and developing the capacity of civil servants, political leaders and the population to be able to align their personal duty and vision to the National Development Direction.

Lifting the world status of a country like Uganda requires sustainable commitment and consistent, comprehensive actions embedded in the constitutional and legal, political, and public service professional practices. The task to transform a country calls for an inevitable commitment and desire (political will) on the part of top political leadership to focus on strengthening institutions of government (which already exist) such as the civil service, and introduce new ones which might be necessary for vision achievement.

Human Resources Development and Capacity Building should be made top priority to ensure sustainable, able governance beyond a single regime (those in power now).

“When Human Resource Managers understand the development agenda and direction of the country, they are better placed to source relevant, competent personnel into Civil Service.”

In terms of sustainability, the Political Regimes change, but the Civil Service remains throughout successive regimes. Therefore, for sustainable governance and development of a country, leaders should focus on developing planning and management capacity of the civil servants.

Human Resources Capacity Development should not only focus on the Civil Servants, but also political leaders, of all active political parties, at all levels. This is because; political leaders are top policy makers, charged with legislation and monitoring government programs to ensure desired progress.

An ignorant Parliament for example is as good as a dead giant when it comes to strategic legislation and policy. Politicians cannot effectively legislate, and later alone supervise government programs unless they are aware of what government priorities are and are given the necessary skill and knowledge to objectively assess progress.

Institutions of Strategic learning and training, should not only be created, but also owned and effectively directed by government. These institutions should be for the sake of designing and delivering special, strategic, capacity building trainings for the public service and political leadership of the country. They should be designed to respond to and answer questions of capacity needs and knowledge development and coaching of new recruits in civil service.

Institutions already in place, such as Uganda Management Institute, National Civil College need to be re-aligned to respond to training needs of the current times. Issues like E-Governance, Corruption, Oil and Gas, Globalisation and Strategic Communication should priority-training areas by these institutions.

Sustainable specialised trainings for particular public servants and political leaders are needed. These should be aimed at addressing current and foreseen challenges that might hinder the development progress of the country. They could include regular anti-corruption trainings for officials working in corruption prone government ministries and departments such as defense and military, police and security, employment and pension and customs and tax services.

Public Service Human Resource Development and Capacity Building could greatly, in part be achieved through collaborations with other existing educational and training institutions, which might be able to organize and conduct specialised trainings for government workers and political leaders according to knowledge and capacity needs of the time.

Finally, it is important that government adopts and encourages innovation and flexible reform in public service such as non-monetary incentives and performance rewards as an alternative to rigid rules and procedures. This will encourage new ideas from new staff to flourish and deliver increased desired results. Public Private Partnership should continue to be an integral part of government human resource recruitment and capacity development. When hired to recruit employees, private firms do their best to get the best performers. Head hunting is a great tool for getting the best brains to serve in government, although motivation and incentive must be well put in place to retain best workers. On job trainings and refresher courses help keep staff on track.

“A farmer who wants more milk from the cow not only gives the cow more to eat, but also ensures a mutual friendship and relationship that makes the cow think that the tea that comes from the milk is also its own to drink.” ” – Ivan Atuyambe – Passau, Germany

Learner’s Submission: Online Services in Uganda

“Uganda as a developing country has decided to go digital away from the old fashioned ways to modern systems and technologies. By 2012, the country plans to go digital and away from the analogue broadcasts of TV and Radio as a sign of development nation wide.

Meanwhile, the government has now digitalized some of its services such as National water and sewerage corporation services, The Uganda Revenue Authority services and more. These services are now accessible online. In the older ways, these services required visiting an office and passing through the extremely long quells that seemed to never end day in out. But now access to these services is now at your own leisure and in your own time since they are available 24 hours.

Although speed of internet connectivity in Uganda is still very poor in the public section, many internet cafes that provide internet in Uganda have a band width of 128kbs-256 kbs which is shared between 10-15 computers and this band width is just claimed and not the actual. Although however, for the private sectors, there are other options. Internet service providers are providing personal internet connecting devices to allow mobile internet access through the use of 36,36+ and 46 technology which offer faster internet usage but at a high cost that the modern man would prefer to use the same money to achieve something else and sees it as a wastage of money.

However, these services are up and running, Uganda still has the challenges of getting the public know about them. Many Uganda citizens don’t know about the digital sections/access of these services and still participate in the outdated system. This is mostly because they are un aware about the switch over from the old system to the new modern system

Another problem with the system is that although the new system exists, the majority of the population is uneducated or has a very low level of education. It’s already a challenge for them to use mobile phones, the use of computers, web applications such as browsers still minimal to most of the people especially in rural areas.

Lots of work is still to be done on the informing and educating of the population about the availability of these services online in order for them to be used more effectively. Finally, these online services now allow you to check your account status to know how you are doing, obtain forms such as paying the tin numbers, taxes, which are uniquely mapped and identified, allow access to the confirmation of payments, Also these services educate the user by informing them the rights and terms of condition which are classified in system denied and access.” – Robert Kikonyogo – Kampala, Uganda