ECA Provides Touchscreen Kiosk for Addis Ababa Local Administration
By Mercy Wambui, ECA, 20 August 2004

A multimedia touch-screen kiosk in Amharic, developed by ECA`s Information Technology Centre for Africa (ITCA) to showcase the value of ICTs for facilitating information delivery in local administration was launched on 25 August 2004 at the Nefa Silk Lafto Sub-City of the Addis Ababa Municipality. The kiosk is part of the Development Informatin Services Division`s (DISD) input to the cooperation framework established in 2003 between ECA and the Mayor of Addis Ababa.

A request from the Policy Study and Planning Commission of the Addis Ababa City Government, identified land administration, infrastructure and housing, trade registration and cooperatives as the offices, in the Nefas Silk Lafto Sub-City, that could benefit from the introduction of ICT applications in facilitating services to the public. As a result, the land administration authority in the Sub-City was selected as a pilot for the initial phase of using information kiosks to provide public services.

Speaking at the launch, Ms. Aida Opoku-Mensah, DISD Officer-in-Charge and ICT Team Leader, noted that ECA works with member States to build their information and knowledge capacity for service delivery and has a commitment to building that capacity in Ethiopia, which hosts the Commission.

“ECA is working with the Ethiopian Ministry of Capacity-building on a number of areas, such as training in telemedicine for Ethiopian health professionals, studies on indicators on ICT impact on various sectors of the economy, including the Woredas (districts) and training of parliamentarians on ICT policy issues.” She said. “However, this touchscreen kiosk is a unique and tangible demonstration of an ICT application in a specific e-government context - land administration.” She added.

The kiosk will provide voice-enabled information on the type of services available at the authority, including documentation and other material that clients are required to fill, the service charge for the various services, and the location of the office (room number) for a particular service.

After welcoming users the information kiosk displays and six menu buttons that one can select by a simple touch. The buttons represent the available services at the authority, such as transfer of ownership for land and houses, bank loans, insurance, court order registrations or cancellation, resolving border disputes, and photocopy services. After a user touches the button representing the service they want, a submenu on the required material, the associated service charge, and the room where they can obtain the service is displayed and read out for them.

Expressing appreciation for the kiosk, Ms. Zenebech Demissie, a client who was at the waiting room in the hope of getting information on ownership transfer and sales, remarked on the ease of the system. “It contains useful and valuable information that we don’t have to queue up for any more. The kiosk will solve the problem faced by many clients who normally wait in long queues for many hours for basic information without much luck. I am very grateful to ECA for this gift”

”Our land administration staff will benefit from the kiosk since time can now be used more efficiently to deal with the actual processing of requests as most clients will come with complete documents - this is a big step for us.” Said a Land Administration staff. “We tried saving time by providing information using videos, but we found it to be too one-sided. Someone has to replay the video, or be able to operate it for the customers. This kiosk means everyone can get the information they want, quickly and without necessarily being able to read as it doesn’t require keyboards.”

ECA is keen to study the impact of this system on the local residents of Addis Ababa, and will aim at providing similar systems in rural areas where information access is even more limited. Further, ECA will continuously upgrade the system and expand to other additional administrative services. This pilot will serve as a demonstration of e-government applications in the forth-coming African Development Forum, whose theme is governance for a progressing Africa.

For more information, contact Makane Faye, ITCA Team Leader, mfaye@uneca.org

Click here to view pictures of the inaugural ceremony.