TransGov, a web and mobile
application that aggregates the various developmental projects that are being
undertaken in Ghana, to enable citizens monitor project status at local and
national level, beat off stiff contest from 10 others to win the
Tech4Governance Innovation competition organised by Penplusbytes and Making All
Voices Count (MAVC) in Accra.
Under the theme “Innovations to Drive Improved Service
Delivery and Better Electoral Process,” Tech4Governance Competition
received over 40 entries from the tech and development space in Ghana.
The panel of
judges, made up of Dorothy Gordon, Director–General, Kofi Annan Centre of
Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE), Nicholas De-Heer, Senior Programmes Officer,
Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Kinna Likimani, Blogging Ghana, and
Patricia Dovi Sampson, Director of Research, Statistics & Information at
the Ministry of Communications, came to this decision after each team made
their pitch to them.
Ms. Dorothy Gordon
expressed delight at what she termed the infectious enthusiasm exhibited by all
the teams; describing the outcome of the event as ‘uplifting.’ “Some of the
other projects are equally excellent and I’m hopeful we are going to see some
develop into fully functional product for wider use.”
The winning team,
represented by Prince Anim and Kwame Yeboah, submitted Transgov under the
‘Improve Service Delivery’ theme, which is primarily an SMS application to
which people could subscribe to via a short code. Subscribers would then, via
the assigned short codes and with names of specific districts of interest, be
periodically updated on activities in the district, including project bidding,
project execution, meeting times of the Assembly.
‘Macheki’-
Interactive Voter Identity and Verification System took the 2nd place under
‘Bettering Electoral process’ theme. It is a web and mobile based application
that displays real time demographics of voters and also makes provision for
verification of voters.
Mr. Richard Abbey,
a member of the ‘Macheki’ team explained that their product would allow voters
to verify their details lodged with the EC on an interactive mobile and web
based application. “Our product will also allow, on that same platform, policy
makers and other social activists, an ability to see a breakdown of registered
voters using their demographics - age, sex, educational background etc.” he
added.
Other entries were
Open Voter Verifiability and Audit Platform, Eyes-in-the-Air (Media Drones),
Election Monitor and RegVote; pitching ideas carved to solve problems in the
Ghanaian Electoral process. The rest, targeting to improve Service delivery,
were ‘Tieme’- Empowering Ghana through Mobile Cloud Data, Resident Watch,
Making All Voices Matter (VOTO Mobile), Know Your Payments and The Big Idea: A
model for Youth-led Accountability.
The winners would
now go through an incubation phase where they would be supported with access to
mentoring support, international networking and related tools and resources
through MAVC’s South to South Lab.
Penplusbytes is a
not-for-profit organization that seeks to empower the media through the use of
Information and Communications Technology to advance journalism in the coverage
of governance and accountability, new media and innovations, and mining, oil
and gas.
Making All Voices Count (MAVC) on
the other hand is an international initiative that contributes towards
effective governance and accountability by enabling citizen engagement and
open, responsive government in 12 countries in Africa and Asia.
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