Hotel Cardoso, Maputo, Mozambique 28-30 May 2007

Workshop on ICTs, Gender and e-Government

Concept Note

28 – 30 May 2007

Hotel Cardoso, Maputo, Mozambique

Background

As a response to the challenges and opportunities presented by the information age, ECA launched the African Information Society Initiative (AISI). The basic objective of AISI is to set out a framework by which Africa could bridge the ICTs gap created between itself and the developed world and facilitate its entry into the information age. Recognizing the linkage between connectivity and national development, ECA in collaboration with partners initiated the National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) policy and plan development process that aims at advising member States on the need to formulate and implement national information and communication strategies. Since the launch of AISI, ECA mounted various advisory services to member States that have not yet defined their national strategies and to those intending to implement sectoral ICT programs and projects in health, education, electronic commerce, etc.

ECA has been assisting member States in their endeavours to initiate, formulate and implement national e-strategies to achieve development goals. The success is evident in that the number of countries with ICT policies increased from 13 in 2000 to 35 in 2007.

AISI and Gender

One of the goals of AISI has been the adoption of policies and strategies to increase access to information and communication facilities, with priorities in serving the rural areas, grass-roots society and other disenfranchised groups, in particular, women and youth. As such the AISI, at the outset, intended to make special efforts to create awareness among those unfamiliar with the potential benefits of the African information infrastructure, with particular attention to gender equity.

In May 2003, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), with support from the Government of Canada, set up the African regional node to the Global e-Policy Resource Network (ePol-NET), to coordinate the demand side of ICT for development in Africa. As a regional node, it was also expected to reach out to national and sub-regional centres of expertise in Africa on the supply side.

The e-Policy Resource Network for Africa is set up to address policy issues, regulations and strategies in areas such as e-commerce, legal and policy frameworks, telecommunications policy and regulation, Internet governance, e-government and connectivity strategies.

In December 2003, during the first World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva the United Nations Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Task Force, the Governments of Canada and Ireland, and the ECA launched the ePol-NET.

Following an extensive campaign of publicizing the services of the ePol-NET at ICT4D events and the development of a Website, a variety of requests for assistance in designing and implementing ICT- based solutions started to flow from local, national and regional institutions. These led to the provision of ePol-NET assistance for the formulation of sectoral and regional strategies to achieve the implementation plans indicated in national e-strategies.

ePol-NET involvement in assisting African countries and regional economic communities formulate sectoral and regional e-strategies include the following:

i. Developing an e-Government Strategy for the East Africa Community (EAC)
ii. Uganda Health ICT Policy
iii. Formulation of an e-Strategy for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), and
iv. Developing an e-Commerce Legal Framework for ECOWAS

e-Government

The advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) coupled with innovative ways of using them in development have led to the launching of various ICT programmes in the various sectors of society. One such application, e-Government is the use of ICTs to improve government efficiency in delivering services to its citizens.

One of the prerequisites for the public to be beneficiary of e-Government services is the availability of electronic access points. This is more important in developing countries where ICTs remain to be inaccessible to a large percentage of the population. Efforts to address this phenomenon, also known as the “digital divide” continue to take place at the international, regional and local levels as witnessed by global initiatives such as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and regional initiatives such as the African Information Society Initiative (AISI).

The recognition by the member States and other stakeholders of the East African Community (EAC) of the need to promote harmonization and coordination of ICT policy and strategy, to create framework for sharing, promoting collaboration on cross-border political and data flow issues to avoid duplication, error, aggregate resources for the benefit of the community; led to the development of a harmonized policy and strategic framework for e-government among EAC member States.

Areas of cooperation agreed to be pillars of the e-Government strategy are customs and immigration, e-Parliament, e-Health, e-Banking and e-Procurement, e-Commerce and e-Tourism, and meteorological and tidal information.

The Gender Dimension

The gender gap in access to ICTs has been identified and been the subject of a number of research and discussion. Access to information for women on a truly equal status with men entails access not only to general education but also to education in ICTs. As it stands out, it is a far cry from the reality. This is truer in societies such as that of developing countries where there is strong male domination and access to knowledge on the use of ICTs or documentary resources tend to be limited. Accordingly, innovative ways of providing access to ICTs for women so that they can in turn access Government information online and make use of government services need to be considered.

The average female adult literacy rate (% age 15 and above) stood at 53% as opposed to 70% for men in 2001. The combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio (%) in the years 2000-01 stood at 47% as opposed to 54% to that of men. Female professional and technical workers represented 45% of the total such workforce in data compiled for Egypt, Namibia and Botswana while no data was available on the rest of the continent.

In addition to the issue of access, the usage patterns of women and men are said to be different. The difference in the usage patterns, in the case of developing countries, is attributed to lack of skills, and lack of time and/or interest. Such a gap in the use of ICTs for one reason or another brings the whole issue of availing government services online questionable as half of the population in a given country may be further marginalised.

Mainstreaming gender in e-Government

Addressing the gender gap in access to government services provided online through e-Government initiatives requires the close involvement of women in the planning and implementation of national e-Government strategies, plans and services. Elements of these issues identified so far include sex- disaggregated data, local languages and local content and fragmented services. Lack of sex-disaggregated data on the use of ICTs will result in the planning of e-Government services that may not take into consideration the ICT access and usage patterns of women in the society.

Lack of the use of local languages and local content in the delivery of e-Government services will also affect the use of such services by the female members of the population in the developing countries, the large percentage of whom are illiterate. The fragmented e-Government services provided by the different sectors of a given country’s Government result in the use of different interfaces, some of which may be difficult to use by the population.

The East African Community e-Government strategy document addresses the critical inequality issues in the ICT access and use in the region. It further outlines a few action points keeping in view the potential use of ICT as a tool for gender equality, Millennium Development Goals and poverty reduction objectives of the partner states. These are:

The ICTs, Gender and e-Government workshop will be held in Maputo, Mozambique from 28 – 30 May 2007. The workshop will take place under the framework of the Global ePolicy Resource Network (ePol-NET) and in cooperation with the Mozambican Ministry of Science and Technology, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the Canadian ePolicy Resource Centre (CePRC) and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).

The main objective of the workshop is to encourage dialogue among ICT and gender experts in countries with the aim of analyzing and evaluating the efforts put in place by African countries to include a gender dimension in e-Government policies and programmes that address the specific needs of African women. It will also try to define a plan of action with the view of introducing and reinforcing the capacities of gender experts in the implementation of ICT policies and sectoral e-Government strategies with a gender dimension. The workshop is expected to come up with a framework for an African Action Plan for ICTs, Gender and e-Government.

This workshop is the second workshop in a series. The first one, for Francophone countries, was held in Tunis, Tunisia from 19 to 21 June 2006. An online discussion list is launched preceding the workshop to discuss issues surrounding the ICTs, Gender and e-Government ahead of the workshop so that participants will be able to reach consensus on issues, and come prepared to the workshop on the topics to be covered.