Title: Using ICTs to enhance duty bearer accountability and transparency to citizens in Eastern and Northern Uganda

Authors: Drake Patrick Mirembe; Jude T. Lubega; Martha Kibukamusoke

Addresses: College of Computing and Information Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda ' Department of Computer Science, Nkumba, Uganda ' School of Business and Management, Uganda Technology and Management University, Kampala, Uganda

Abstract: This article explores the use of ICTs to enhance engagement between citizens and leaders in Eastern and Northern Uganda. It highlights how ICT empowers citizens to demand accountability and transparency from leaders. The key objective was to establish the extent to which the use of ICT promoted leaders responsiveness to citizens' concerns about accountability and transparency. A participatory action research was used through key informant interviews, focus group discussions and survey targeting 180 citizens and leaders. Findings show that nearly 83.1% of the citizens (108 of the 120 who responded to the question) do use ICT to engage duty bearers on government programmes and accountability issues and the most commonly used ICTs by citizens to engage with leaders are mobiles phones (about 83.1%) and radios (64.6%). It was clear that use of ICT does indeed improve leader responsiveness to citizen concerns.

Keywords: ICT; e-democracy; social media; accountability; transparency; duty bearer.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITCC.2019.106559

International Journal of Information Technology, Communications and Convergence, 2019 Vol.3 No.3, pp.228 - 243

Received: 13 Jun 2019
Accepted: 17 Feb 2020
Published online: 14 Apr 2020 *

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