Uganda Deal for up to 300,000 Laptops to Aid Civil Services

An agreement with an international joint venture to supply up to 300,000 laptops mainly to civil-service employees will help the Ugandan government make its workers more efficient and facilitate the delivery of services, officials say.

The venture, Tropix/Founder Computer Co., has supplied a first batch of 3,000 laptops to the Civil and Corporate Employees Computer Ownership Programme (CICOCO), a US$106 million project intended to help the government jump-start its e-government program.

The thinking behind the laptop project, according to government officials, is to get the civil service as competitive in the delivery of services as private sector. The adoption of ICT is expected to change the way government officials handle public affairs and speed service delivery.

"I think the civil service will be improved greatly now that we will be able to continue with our work even when we are not in the formal office environment," said David Arinaitwe, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"I think that on a larger scale, it is going to change the way the civil service works – government will work better, more transparent, and [it] reduces cost providing services," Arinaitwe said.

Tropix/Founder is a joint venture involving investors from the U.S., Australia and China, with the laptops themselves manufactured in China. Uganda's ICT Ministry is monitoring the project, which is funded by the Chinese government through grants from a Chinese development bank, Exim.

Each laptop will cost $699 through a loan scheme from a local bank, Stanbic Bank. The bank will offer loans for the purchase of the laptops in repayment packages over 12 months, 24 months or 36 months. A special 48-month package will be reserved exclusively for civil servants who hold accounts with Stanbic Bank.

The computers come with a 120G-byte SATA hard disk; 1G byte of RAM; a 14.1-inch WXGA LCD screen; and a 1.6GHz Pentium dual-core T2330 processor. They also come with a DVD writer, USB ports, integrated graphics, wireless Internet card, independent web camera, a TV card and the home edition of Windows XP operating system, among other specifications.

Civil servants' children can also purchase the computers under the same arrangements, but need approval from their parents.

The government also plans to pursue a computer scheme for students in the next phase of its e-government program. Such a scheme will be aimed at covering the needs of students from secondary school-level to university.

The laptops are part of a public-sector reform program created to improve delivery of services, according to Nicholas Sunday Olwor, the senior assistant secretary to the minister of state for ICT.

Eligible civil servants are those who earn a salary of 120,000 Ugandan shillings ($71) per month and above.

The government decided to handle the marketing of the laptops to essentially cut out middlemen and keep the price low, according to Olwor.

To help make the project viable, the government of Uganda, in partnership with Abu Dhabi-based Warid Telecom, will facilitate training of all civil servants at a subsidized cost to help them acquire computer literacy skills.

"The response to the laptops' project has been encouraging. We even have some private organizations that have expressed interest in the scheme," Olwor said.

The government also plans to introduce BlackBerry mobile-phone handsets that will be synchronized with the laptops, to help civil servants get work done even when they are not in the office.

The ICT ministry will, starting from the 2008/09 financial year, request every local government authority to have an information technology expert to oversee maintenance of the laptops. The government is set to receive another consignment of more than 3,000 laptops at the end of April, and the distribution of that consignment is expected to start in the middle of next month. The training of civil servants on the use of the laptops is also expected to start early next month.